Johann Nepomuk Schöpf (1733–1798) Magyarországon Nagyvárad, Pécel, Buják

Abstract

In the billiard room of the Ráday mansion in Pécel fragments of wall painting were discovered in 1954. They claim attention not only on account of their good artistic quality but also because when the coat of paint peeled off from the ceiling, the sinopia of the fresco applied with red and black colours – a truly rare sight – was revealed. The artist of the frescoes was Johann Nepomuk Schöpf, whom the writer Ferenc Kazinczy also saw working in Pécel, as his travel diary reveals. The Prague-born artist was the scion of a family of artists and first worked in his father Johann Adam’s fresco painting workshop, but autonomous works of his are already known from the 1760s. In the early ‘70s he was in Vienna from where he came to Hungary to paint altar pictures for the cathedral in Temesvár, before he received a commission from Bishop Ádám Patachich to decorate the cathedral and episcopal palace of Nagyvárad (1773–1776). Particularly the latter shows kindred traits to the decoration of the billiard room in Pécel. Both include neo-classical late baroque illusory architecture and in the sumptuous ensembles of a kaleidoscope of forms so typical of Schöpf the artist paired diverse materials and colours to produce highly unique, bizarre and unrealistic compositions. A chancellery document of 1782 claims that Schöpf also visited Buják. The central altar picture of St Martin in the parish church is to be attributed to him on the basis of stylistic features and motifs.