The Annunciation
Renaissance sensation from Szeged
MúzeumCafé 6.
The Annunciation has been restored as the main attraction of the exhibition ‘And God saw it was very good’, which opens at the Móra Ferenc Museum in Szeged on 1 September. The exhibition is part of the programme for ‘The Year of the Bible’. The painting, in storage for a long time with its hidden beauty, can be dated to the middle of the 16th century. Subsequent changes in ownership and other di≠iculties have caused significant wear to the tondo. According to recently discovered records, the last known restoration was undertaken in 1925 by József Konstantin Beer (1862-1933) of the National Hungarian Museum of Fine Arts. For the present exhibition the tondo has been revived by restorer Zsolt Berta and woodwork specialist Béla Nagy, with restorer-artist Zsuzsa Kovács leading the project. The museum acquired the masterpiece in 1925, when writer Ferenc Móra was the director. The appearance of the painting, forgotten for more than 80 years, has caused a sensation among art historians of the cinquecento. Great media interest has focussed on the conditions of its discovery, its provenance and the identity of the painter.
Having misread an earlier document, the museum’s former director recorded it as the work of Allesandro Allori (1535-1607) or Angelo Bronzino (1503-1572), yet experts around the world discount these names. They nearly all agree the painter could be Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), a Mannerist artist and architect in the service of the Medici family and a pupil of Michelangelo. The Annunciation is a masterpiece of unparalleled beauty, which once belonged to the formerly famous Enyedi collection, though later ‘disappeared’. As regards the tondo’s provenance, the 350 years following its creation are unknown. It can only be presumed that it did not decorate a church or monastery, but was rather commissioned by a wealthy patrician or patron, perhaps for a private chapel – otherwise it could hardly have entered the international art trade. Its known owner at the end of the 19th century was a certain collector, Illés Gáki, as was recorded in 1913 by Court Counsellor and titular director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Gábor Térey (1864-1927). Lukács Enyedi, or Eisenstädter (1845-1906), an enthusiastic collector, economist and politician, the founder of Szegedi Napló (1878), bought the picture from the lesser known owner in 1896. After moving to the capital in 1888 Enyedi had already acquired several paintings by Hungarian and foreign, especially Italian and Dutch masters. Later, the collection of paintings owned by his father-in-law, a wealthy ship owner and grain merchant of Szeged, Andor Zsótér (1824-1906), also came into his possession.
Most of the collection was exhibited in the summer of 1902 when The Annunciation and 52 other works were displayed in the Budapest Kunsthalle. The highly cultured Enyedi, who first became an adviser to the Minister of Finance and then a bank president, adopted the habit of collectors at the time and himself identified the previously unknown items of his collection. Without any reservation, he attributed his new acquisition, The Annunciation, to Ra≠aello Santi (1483-1520), writing the full name of this outstanding master on the back of the tondo. The unfounded attribution was further complicated by the fact that the then director of the National Picture Gallery, Károly Pulszky (1853-1899), one of the best Renaissance experts identified the painting as an original work by Cristofano Allori (1577-1621). The ‘joint will’ of the Enyedi couple, which was certified by witnesses at the beginning of the 20th century, recorded that the surviving spouse would bequest the whole art collection to the Szeged museum. However, after her husband’s death Ilona Enyedi née Zsótér (1853-1922) remarried, although she became widowed again in 1908. In 1919, despite the testament, she decided to bestow 25 works of art on the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts instead of the Szeged museum. The twice widowed countess died in 1922 without any legal descendant. According to her relatives, her will made after her first husband’s death was not found in her mansion at 3 Ostrom Street in Buda. The inheritors, contesting the right of bequest of Szeged’s museum, gave only three out of the valuable collection’s 118 works of art to the museum as indemnification. The fact that in the end Szeged received a share of the bequest was largely due to the extremely clever reasoning of the director of the Szeged museum and his loyalty manifested for the Museum of Fine Arts.
The remaining part of the collection, five paintings on canvas and others with the exception of those donated to the Museum of Fine Arts earlier, were sold as desired by the inheritors at an auction held between 15 and 24 February 1923 in the Ernst Museum. Unfortunately the whereabouts of those works is unknown. The Szeged museum kept the portrait depicting Ilona Enyedi from 1925 to 1940, when it was returned to the Fine Arts Museum. In 1949, under the management of director István Genthon, it was discarded as a work “lacking artistic merit” and was handed to the Ministry of Trade and Cooperatives “in order to gain valuable foreign currency”.