Szépművészeti Múzeum — 3: European Sculpture 1200 – 1800
Glorious! Sublime! How to start? International Gothic Style! OK, it’s not my favourite, I like the styles immediately preceding and after, though I’m a sucker for the S-curves. Some with surprisingly well-preserved polychrome like the sculptor from Fabriano’s Virgin and Child, some, like the Workshop of Jakob Warschauer’s Bust of Female Saint so beautiful and changing from every angle.
The sculptor from Allgäu’s The Death of the Virgin is one of several smaller ones with amazing movement, life, and depth, along with the trio of pieces from Antwerp and the workshop of Robert Moreau. Near that is a larger work by Jacopo Sansovino (Jacopo Tatti), Virgin and Child of gilded wax and canvas is an example of the diversity of the collection. Other pieces are of clay, ceramic, stone, bronze. Victor Kayser’s Passover Feast is notable for being both stone relief and rarely depicted Old Testament story in Christian art, taking place the evening before Exodus.
Finally, probably modelled on a marble relief of Lorenzo Ghiberti, Virgin and Child, the painted and gilded stucco bust where the baby Jesus catches my eye with a most un-infant-like focus and consciousness.
Another three hours of museum wandering done. I don’t think I’d have made it through if the other half of the first floor had been open, or would have been kicked out.
