Abstract
In order to place nineteenth-century Hungarian art into international context, this article calls for the theoretical discourse of cultural memory, when a suppressed community turns to their past and insists on their antecedents’ traditions for the survival of their culture. When, in the 1850s and 1860s, the leaders of the Habsburg Austrian Empire retaliated against Hungary for its 1848-49 “Fight for Freedom”, Hungarian visual art of the era rediscovered long-honoured figures of the historical past as the essential components of Hungarian national identity. This article argues that the successful visualization and memorialization of outstanding historical characters with symbolic values for the Hungarian nation was due to history painting itself as medium. The Hungarian painters’ choice of characters vigorously reacted to the changing political relationship between the Austrians and the Hungarians from the failure of the 1849 Hungarian Fight for Freedom until the 1850s and the 1870s involving the 1867 Austro-Hungarian Compromise. Keeping it in mind, the display and the reception of four great paintings, Bertalan Székely’s The Discovery of the Body of King Louis II (1860), Viktor Madarász’s Péter Zrínyi and Ferenc Frangepán in Prison at Wiener-Neustadt (1864), Székely’s The Women of Eger (1867) and Gyula Benczúr’s The Baptism of Vajk (1875) are analysed.
Highlights
In order to place nineteenth-century Hungarian art into international context, this article calls for the theoretical discourse of cultural memory, when a suppressed community turns to their past and insists on their antecedents’ traditions for the survival of their culture
Foreigners are usually interested in those parts of Hungarian culture that are considered to be unique in their cultural horizons; one of the best examples may be nineteenth-century Hungarian history painting created in the context of National Romanticism, under the domination of the Habsburg Empire
This article focuses on the special circumstances that led to the ascension of once lived men and women – in particular King Saint Stephen I and Louis II (1506-1526), Péter Zrínyi (1621-1671) and Ferenc Frangepán (1620-1671) and the heroines of the victorious Battle of Eger (1552) – to the status of the Hungarian nation’s either tragic or glorious heroes and heroines as the constituents of Hungarian nationhood
Summary
In order to place nineteenth-century Hungarian art into international context, this article calls for the theoretical discourse of cultural memory, when a suppressed community turns to their past and insists on their antecedents’ traditions for the survival of their culture. Foreigners are usually interested in those parts of Hungarian culture that are considered to be unique in their cultural horizons; one of the best examples may be nineteenth-century Hungarian history painting created in the context of National Romanticism, under the domination of the Habsburg Empire.
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