An active life among works of art – a portrait of restorer Miklós Móré
MúzeumCafé 19.
Eighty-one-year-old Miklós Móré was fortunate to be among the first in Hungary to study restoration. His career began at the beginning of the 1950s when the profession was developing and experiencing major changes. Before the Second World War artists restored works of art and there was no official training for restorers in Hungary. Due to a huge increase in the number of works to be restored, a course for specialists was launched at the Academy of Arts immediately after the war. Miklós Móré graduated in 1953, then joined the staff at the Museum of Fine Arts. At the beginning he didn’t have a place to work but eventually colleagues took him in and let him work on some tasks, especially when restoration of the medieval works in the Old Hungarian Collection could no longer be delayed – saved in the cellars from the bombing in 1944, they had got completely soaked when the snow melted. For the young expert it was a real challenge, since they were important examples of the few surviving items in the medieval Hungarian collection and they were in a poor condition. The panels of the Nagyszalók altar, for example, were so much warped as a result of various environmental effects that their restoration required complicated technical procedures and great care. Móré developed his own method, which his colleagues were doubtful about at first, yet time showed his method’s efficiency and by now it has become a well-accepted procedure. While restoring works of art damaged during World War II represented the biggest task at the beginning of the 1950s, at the end of the decade the complete conversion of both the wings of the Old Picture Gallery generated much work. In connection with the expansion, the items due to their dilapidated condition, Miklós Móré naturally played a large role in restoring those paintings.