Dutch Old Masters from Budapest [antikvár]

ForewordThe earliest connection between Hungary and the Netherlands dates back to tlie sixteentli century. The Brussels-born Mary of Hungary married Louis II of Hungary in 1515. Upon his death inisző she governed Hungary as regent and from 1530 she assumed the governance of the Habsburg Netherlands. In the seventeenth century, as many as 3,000 Hungarian protestants studied at the universities of the United Provinces. The most notable admiral of the Golden Age, Michiel de Ruyter, is not only a national hero in the Netherlands, but also in Hungary as he rescued 26 Hungarian protestant preachers who were condemned to galley slavery in Naples after refusing to convert to Catholicism. Aside from these historical connections, there is also a cultural link, which is highlighted in the exhibition in the Frans Hals Museum ] De Hallen: the unique Dutch old master paintings that ended up in the collection ofthe Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest.At first glance, the Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen and the Szépművészeti Múzeum appear to have little in conamon. The Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen is one museum in two locations, with old, modern and contemporary conceptual art, video, film and photography. The collection of old masters focuses on works from the early modern era made in Haarlem, and since 1913 has been housed in the Old Men's Almshouse, a seventeenth-century building in Dutch Renaissance style. The Szépművészeti Múzeum has art from all periods and regions, which are housed in a neo-classical temple of art built in 1906. Where old Dutch and Flemish painting is concerned, however, the museums can indeed measure up to one another. The Szépművészeti Múzeum holds an extraordinarily fine collection of Dutch and Flemish art with a rich history. With more than 500 paintings, tliis collection is the fourth largest in the world outside the Netherlands. Never before have so many works from this collection - 57 paintings and 27 drawings-been seen outside Hungary in a single exhibition. AImost3oyears ago, in 1987, there was a smaller exhibition in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne that featured seventeenth-century Dutch paintings from Budapest.The renovation of the museum in Budapest gives us an exclusive opportunity to bring part of the collection back to the place where it was created. The Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen was given a free hand in putting together a superb exhibition of works from the collection. The emphasis lies primarily on works by seventeenth-century Haarlem arrists, creating a splendid parallel with the Frans Hals Museum's collection. There is a strong focus on artists who spent their entire career working in Haarlem, but many who only worked there for a short time or were born there are also featured. Some of the Haarlem works are brought face to face with masterpieces by other seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish artists in the Szépművészeti Múzeum's collection, who are not represented in the Frans Hals Museum. These works shed new light on the importance of Haarlem artists in the blossoming of the Golden Age. The exhibition also includes some magnificent drawings from the Szépművészeti Múzeum's collection. These draw-