Methodology The ancestral gallery of the Esterházy Mansion in Pápa

The history of a singular portrait series

MúzeumCafé 51.

The ancestral gallery of the Esterházy Mansion in Pápa is a rare example of a set of paintings which moved to a museum after 1945, but which have been reassembled in their original location, if not exactly in their original environment. Little remains of the aristocratic ancestral galleries of historic Hungary, which is well preserved and complete. Thus this collection of pictures, which can again be seen together, is especially significant. The pictures placed in the so-called Ancestors’ Hall have returned to the building as an element of a reconstruction project. In the 15th century the Garai family had a castle built on the site of the existing mansion. In 1626 the estate and the castle came into the ownership of the Esterházys. From around 1740–1750 FerencEsterházy, Maria Theresa’s court treasurer, was the lord of the castle. The noted Austrian architect Franz Anton Pilgram was commissioned to reconstruct the building. The late Baroque furnishings of the residence were almost completely destroyed in the period 1945–1956, when the building served as a Soviet barracks, though luckily the paintings were taken to the National Museum. Gradual renovation of the mansion began in the mid 1990s. Based on research results, comprehensive architectural, as well as interior and landscape designs were drawn up between 2009 and 2011 with the aim of recreating the 18th-century spaces. According to painting restoration experts, the ancestral gallery was initially housed in the south-east tower. An inventory of 1799 mentions 29 paintings, of which 24 were hung on the first floor of the tower, in the so-called billiards room, which was confirmed in 2014 during the course of reconstruction. In the second half of the 19th century, the gallery was expanded with works by several artists. The ancestral gallery got to its present place in the 1860s-1870s, thanks probably to Count PálEsterházy, as part of his plans for the complete modernisation of the mansion. On the basis of 20th-century inventories and a photo album of 1927, it can be established that the gallery was moved to the three corridors of the mansion’s first floor, and that at the time it comprised 44 pictures. The Soviet military occupying the mansion in 1945 officially returned 37 of them to the owner. In 1949 the Ministerial Commission for Endangered Private Collections had the paintings moved to the Historical Picture Gallery of the Hungarian National Museum. What can be seen now is actually a 21st-century reconstruction of an ancestral gallery. There are several restored pictures not yet in Pápa and a few are still held in the National Museum, which are in a partly restored, partly repainted, poor condition.