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The pitfalls of obviousness
The self-framing picture and the “teleology” of painting in a late self-portrait by Rembrandt
, Sándor : Rembrandt szemben önarcképével [Rembrandt in front of his self-portrait] , in Rembrandt. Egy arckép fényben és aranyban [1924] [Rembrandt. A portrait in light and gold] , Budapest : Szépirodalmi Kiadó , 1973 , 140
In his text Le Persée de Benvenuto Cellini Liszt is more interested in the problems of the artist in the society and of the specificities of the statuary on the music, than in Benvenuto Cellini’s statue itself. So he establishes a parallel between Cellini and Berlioz, identifying both with the mythic hero. He emphasizes “the hidden relationships between works of genius” (letter from Liszt to Berlioz). The differences and similarities between the arts are also explained. The text gives additional information concerning Liszt himself.
smaller parts and details, and the social status of writing as an occupation. Meanwhile, Pliny’s literary self-portrait is shaped the way he wants it to be by a diverse set of literary techniques utilized in the letters, and the writer’s statements that
Adalékok az esztergomi Keresztény Múzeum egy bolognai képéhez
Contributions to a Bolognese painting in the Christian Museum, Esztergom
Abstract
I wish to prove that the painting preserved in the store of the Christian Museum of Esztergom attributed to: “Bolognese painter, last quarter of the 16th century: Self-Portrait of the Artist with his Family” was painted in 1583–84 by Tiburzio Passarotti (1553–1612), the first-born son of the great Bolognese painter Bartolomeo Passarotti (1529–1592). The painting shows Tiburzio's wife, Taddea Gaggi and his younger son, Arcangelo. I have the following most important analogues to the attribution and the date of the work: Tiburzio Passarotti's Self-Portrait in the Uffizi, Florence, and Bartolomeo Passarotti's Family Picture in Dresden. I would like to underline that the painting attributed to “Emilian painter, last quarter of the 16th century: Portrait of a Noble Family” found in a privat collection in Hungary was executed by Bartolomeo Passarotti by his own hand. My opinion is verified by the comparision of the relatively late works of Bartolomeo. This picture (1582–83) also represents the portraits of Taddea Gaggi and Arcangelo.
PUER, ABIGE MUSCAS!:
REMARKS ON RENAISSANCE FLYOLOGY
Summary
We first come across flies painted to demonstrate the skilled craftsmanship of the artist in the works of Giovanni dei Grassi and the Limbourg brothers. The first such example I know of in a panel painting is in the painting of the Death of the Virgin, from the circle of the Master of the Albert altar (Esztergom, Christian Museum). Inspired by Pliny's anecdotes, painting apprentices in Francesco Squarcione's workshop in Padua in the 1460s, especially Giorgio Schiavone, painted trompe l'oeil flies to trick their fellow artists. Among others, humour, the romantic desire to revive antiquity, and the Aristotelian paradox that the ugly in art becomes beautiful also played a role. It was in this environment that Filarete's anecdote in which Giotto fools Cimabue with a painted fly was first concocted. The anecdote is told in the context of the paragone. Trompe l'oeil flies and the glorification of painting are similarly joined in Derick Baegert's painting of St Luke. The fly seen in Dürer's Feast of the Rosegarlands is related both to Dürer's self-portrait in the same painting and to the Opus quinque dierum. Anecdotes about flies so true-to-life as to deceive the viewer to this day survive in newer and newer versions, although the essence of these tales remains the same: the flies demonstrate the artist's humour and his ability to imitate nature.
After the revolution in 1956, the cultural policy in Hungary shifted to allow a new openness toward Western-European movements: consequently 1956–1967 became one of the most important transitional periods of Hungarian music history. Composers turned away from the tradition of the foregoing thirty years, determined by the influence of Bartók and Kodály, imitating rather the works of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Boulez, Nono, Lutosławski, Penderecki and Stockhausen. In this context the 78-year-old Zoltán Kodály’s Symphony, written in 1960–1961 for the Swiss Festival Orchestra and dedicated to the memory of Arturo Toscanini, was rejected by the young generation of composers and also Hungarian music critics, who turned themselves for the first time against the much-revered figure of authority. The Symphony’s emphasis on C major, its conventional forms, Brahms-allusions, pseudo self-citations and references to the 19th-century symphonic tradition were also received without comprehension in Western Europe. Kodály’s letters and interviews indicate that the composer suffered disappointment in this negative reception. Drawing on manuscript sources, Kodály’s statements and the Symphony itself, my study argues that the three movements can be read as caricature-like self-portraits of different phases of the composer’s life (the young, the mature and the old) and that Kodály identified himself with the symphonic genre and the C-major scale.
„Kreálok valamit, csak így szavakból!” – mesterséges intelligencia és művészet az énképmérésben
„I create something, from words alone!” – Artifical intelligence and art in self-image assessment
Háttér és célkitűzések: A tetszőleges szövegi bemenet alapján művészi minőségű képeket alkotó mesterséges intelligencia (MI) megjelenése eddig még feltáratlan lehetőségeket tartalmazhat a pszichológia számára. Jelen kutatás során egy kvantitatív és kvalitatív módszereket szintetizáló és a résztvevő számára is élvezetes új énképmérő módszer kidolgozására tettünk kísérletet. A módszer elődjei közé tartoznak a különböző nyitott kérdéses önjellemzések, az önarcképfestés művészetterápiai tradíciója, illetve a számítógép-alapú testképvizsgáló eljárások. Módszer: A kutatás során arra kértünk 11 fiatal felnőtt résztvevőt, hogy a Midjourney nevű szoftver segítségével készítsenek képeket önmagukról. Az egyes képek alapjául szolgáló parancssorokat kategóriaelemzésnek vetettük alá, a résztvevőkkel pedig félig strukturált interjúkat vettünk fel. Eredmények: Az elemzések során szignifikáns egyéni különbségeket találtunk a résztvevők által említett önjellemzési kategóriákban, illetve a kategóriák időbeli változásában. Hogy ezek a különbségek milyen szituációs vagy személyen belüli hatásoknak tulajdoníthatók, eljövendő kutatások tárgyát fogja képezni, például a flow állapotra való egyéni érzékenység és az identitásállapot szerepének vizsgálatán keresztül. Az interjúk tanulsága szerint a résztvevők egy izgalmas önismereti tanulásként, identitásuk különböző aspektusaival való kísérletezésként élték meg a folyamatot. Többen megdöbbentek a gép képességeitől és saját művészi teremtőerejüktől, azonban az ember-gép kommunikáció félresiklásai több esetben megnehezítették az alkotást. Következtetések: Az általunk kidolgozott eljárás magában hordozza a potenciált arra, hogy a későbbiekben egy valid és reliábilis mérőeszközzé válhasson, nemcsak az énkép, hanem bármilyen attitűd mérésére. Az énhatékonyság-érzés megtapasztalása, illetve az önismereti tanulás érzete hosszú távon akár egy művészetterápiás felhasználásnak is az alapját képezheti.
The goal of my research is to put together from scattered mosaics an intellectual portrait of Ibn al-Muqaffa c , a complex and enigmatic thinker, and a key figure in the transmission of the late antique heritage to the Arabo-Islamic culture. This article is the third in a series. The first, “ La Lumière et les Ténèbres dans l’œuvre d’Ibn al-Muqaffa c ” (Light and Darkness in Ibn al-Muqaffa c ) was published in AOH Vol. 61 (3). In that article, I set out the rationalist and anti-Islamic ideas presented in works attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa c . The second article, “On the authenticity of al-Adab al-ṣaġīr attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa c and the titles of the Kitāb al-ādāb al-kabīr, al-Adab al-ṣaġīr, tal-Yatīma and the Polemic against Islam ” was published in AOH Vol. 62 (2). This third article complements the picture of the rationalist and anti-Islamic Ibn al-Muqaffa c that I have presented in the first article and shows another side of his attitude towards religion. According to the texts quoted here, the rationality of people is not enough to secure the peace of the individual soul, much less the peace of the state. The welfare of society requires a well functioning state whose cohesion is best ensured by religion.The introduction is a short outline of the correlation between Ibn al-Muqaffa c ’s social status and his attitude towards power, reason and religion. In the first section, I will quote and analyse some views attributed to him that reveal an unusual but coherent approach towards religion. The second section will present his ideas and reasoning that links reason, religion and power. The conclusion of this article will not end this series on Ibn al-Muqaffa c , but will be followed by the next article entitled: “A Self-portrait of a Wise Jackal; Ibn al-Muqaffa c ’s Heroes: the Sage and the Sovereign.”
Kis flamand “Ki kicsoda”. Gonzales Coques vagy ifj. Lucas Franchoys?
Gonzales Coques or Lucas Franchoys the Younger?
Abstract
A small panel (Hungarian private collection) depicting the scene of giving comission for a portrait was sold off at the Ernst Museum's 34th auction in 1927 as a work by Gonzales Coques. When in 1995 the painting cropped up again, I proposed an attribution to “the circle of Gerard ter Borch” and a dating to around 1650, but the distinctly portrait-like representation of the characters held the promise of a more exact identification. During the investigation I soon arrived at a studio interior in which – according to the traditionally identification – “Daniel Seghers is sitting for his portrait in the atelier of Gonzales Coques”. Auctioned under the name of Coques several times, the authorship of the work has been widely contested by experts – with good reason – and most recently it is only labelled “by a Flemish painter”. As for the sitter, it is quite probable that he is the Jesuit monk Daniel Seghers who painted flower still-lives. Though in his authentic portrait, the one showing him in profile also used by Cornelis de Bie, he is as an older man with a small moustache and beard, his demeanor, his bony face structure and earnest glance are very similar.
I went on looking for the painter of these two scenes among the Flemish followers of Coques on the basis of style criticism and found analogies in the figures of Charles Emmanuel Bizet. However, biographical data made me discard this hypothesis.
Proceeding along the identification of facial features I concluded that the portratist in the two pictures does not resemble any of the known portraits of Coques, but one can recognize Lucas Franchoys the younger on the basis of the engraved portrait also published by Cornelis de Bie. Another figure of the scene can be identified on this basis: Peeter Franchoys sitting by the table, looking at Seghers and pointing at the companion writing next to him. To conclude, the two pictures were painted by Lucas Franchoys II, and the known biographical data allow for a dating between 1645 and 1649.
Further, I have also identified Lucas Franchoys II's features in another two paintings known in the art trade. A small panel shows a man clipping tobacco, probably representing the sense of smell from a series of The Five Senses painted by Lucas Franchoys, hiding a self-portrait in it. The other is a high-quality work by Peeter Franchoys showing his younger brother a few years later when both of them were living in Mechelen.
Arckép és önarckép Verancsics Antal (1504–1573) és a művészetek
Portrait and self-portrait antal verancsics (1504–1573) and the arts
Antal Verancsics (1504-1573) was born in Sebenico (Šibenik) to a noble family and he got to Hungary through family relations: his uncle János Statileo (Statilić) was bishop of Gyulafehérvár. His political career started in the court of King John I (Szapolyai). In 1541 he followed the widow of the king, Izabella Jagiello to Transylvania and only changed over to the other king of Hungary, Ferdinand I’s court in 1549 where he filled high administrative positions. As a Habsburg envoy, he sojourned in the Ottoman Empire on two occasions and in 1568 he concluded the Treaty of Adrianople (Hadrianopolis, Edirne). On the zenith of his ecclesiastic career he became archbishop of Esztergom (1569) and eventually cardinal (1573). He went into historiography, too: he wrote some works and a considerable number of sources he collected survive. In his youth he wrote poems in Latin and Italian and was on good terms with painters and sculptors. Martino Rota, also born in Sebenico, was invited to Hungary by him. Several data confirm that he had a keen interest in portraits (he wrote an epigram on Dürer’s Melanchthon portrait); he ordered portraits of himself from Melchior Lorch, Martino Rota and Antonio Abondio. He organized that a Crakow painter should paint the portrait of John Sigismund elected King of Hungary, and his correspondence with his siblings about having a portrait of his father painted is known. Back from his first mission in Turkey, in 1558 he wrote an epigram on an enigmatic woodcut composition of a multitude of elements tailored to Sultan Suleyman I, and dedicated the emblem to Maximilian, crowned king of Bohemia and heir apparent to the Hungarian throne. This composition is included in the second edition of Johannes Sambucus’ Emblemata. Some tomes of his library featured – in line with the fashion of the age – supralibros, and as bishop of Eger, he had an ornate parchment codex, a Praefationale made (1563). The rather mediocre quality initials of the manuscript echo the humanist cult of letters which produced the most beautiful achievements of artistic calligraphy in the middle of the century. In one initial Verancsics himself appears, his tiny figure kneeling before Christ’s cross (fol. 42r). Verancsics was interested in the material relics of antiquity, too: in Transylvania he collected stone carvings, coins and Roman inscriptions. As bishop of Eger he perpetuated the restoration of the castle in a monumental inscription. Also attracted to sepulchral monuments, he had the tomb of one of his predecessors in the diocese damaged in the siege of 1552 restored. He wished to have his funerary monument in the St Nicholas church in Nagyszombat, one like his predecessor in the episcopacy of Esztergom Miklós Oláh had, with a portrait statue. It was eventually not made. Finally, an overview of the sources that can provide clues as to the artistic interests of Antal Verancsics reveals that most of the sources are in the – unpublished – collection of letter and the book of poems he compiled. His intellectual self-portrait also includes his attraction to the arts.
