Giorgio Vasari’s Annunciation in the former Enyedi-Zsótér Collection of Szeged
MúzeumCafé 27.
From 1896 the painting, regarded as a Florentine work by a disputed master, was one of the 118 items in the Enyedi-Zsótér Collection held in Budapest. It was first recorded in the Szeged Museum’s inventory in 1925 under the title The Immaculate Conception. A set of documentary photographs depicting the interior of the former Enyedi-Zsótér residence has come to light and is truly valuable. In 2010 Erzsébet Heumann, a descendant of the Szeged Zsótér family and the great-grandniece of the collecting pair, approached the Szeged Museum with a view to donating some of the collected Zsótér items which had been scattered across the world, as well as copies of some rare family photographs. From 1896 The Annunciation was part of the Enyedi-Zsótér Collection in the Hungarian capital. The increasingly valuable acquisitions obtained by the couple over many years were first kept at their Eötvös Street residence and later in their home at 3 Ostrom (formerly Ilona) Street on Castle Hill. The mainly Italian and Dutch works filled the Italian Renaissance drawing room of their three-storey villa to the ceiling. The unparalleled photographs which have turned up bear witness to the interior decoration of the salon and other rooms. One of the most significant is a picture taken in 1909 showing the widowed Ilona Zsótér sitting on a divan in the Italian Renaissance room below The Annunciation. The building was destroyed during World War II, but information about it is held in the Municipal Archives. The huge edifice, with its cellar, tower staircase, terrace, kitchen and laundry room, was designed by Kristóf Schubert in 1884. After the death of the couple the collection was dispersed. Some of the art treasures ended up abroad, but nine old paintings were donated to the Fine Arts Museum.