Page 44 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Budapest

42  INTRODUCING BUD APEST

Exploring the Museums and Galleries
European Paintings
Most of the city’s museums and galleries are located in and Sculpture
historic buildings. These include the spacious chambers of Masterpieces by the finest
the restored Royal Palace, which in the 1970s and 1980s European artists, from medieval
were designated as the premises of several museums, times to the modern day, are
also divided between two
including the Hungarian National Gallery. Many museums museums in Budapest.
– including the Hungarian National Museum and Budapest The Museum of Fine Arts
History Museum – also stage temporary exhi bitions that has a magnificent collection of
are popular with both locals and tourists. Italian paintings, dating from the
14th century up to the Baroque
period, by mas ters such as
Titian, Antonio da Correggio,
Paolo Veronese, Giambattista
Tiepolo and Jacopo Tintoretto.
However, it is the Esterházy
Madonna (1508) by Raphael,
that is the jewel of the Italian
collection. Equally splendid is the
exhi bition of Spanish paintings,
which is one of the largest in the
world. Works by Goya in clude
The Water Carrier (c.1810). There
are seven can vases by El Greco
and others by Francisco de
Zurbarán and Bartolomé Esteban
Murillo. Other galleries within
the museum represent artists
of the Netherlands and Germany,
as well as British, French and
Flemish masters. The museum
also owns more than 100,000
drawings and engravings by
the Old Masters, while its
Sculpture of Imre Varga at the gallery named after him (see p175) modern art collection includes
some notable works.
Hungarian National Gallery. Modern European paintings
Hungarian Paintings In the 19th century, Hungarian can also be viewed in the
and Sculpture
painting developed and Ludwig Museum of Contem­
There are two important venues flourished, at the same time porary Art. All the canvases
that should be on the itinerary reflecting all the major belong to the Peter Ludwig
of anyone interested in viewing international modern art Foundation of Germany. Highly
the finest examples of movements. The Hungarian prized works here include two
Hungarian art. style can be seen particularly in paintings by Pablo Picasso,
At the Hungarian National the works of Pál Szinyei­Merse, Mother and Child and Musketeer.
Gallery, seven chronological Mihály Munkácsy and László
sections present paintings and Paál. For sculpture, meanwhile,
sculpture dating from the the main names to look out for
Middle Ages up until modern are István Ferenczy, Zsigmond
times. The sequence begins in Kisfaludi Stróbl and Imre Varga.
the Lapidarium, where frag­ It is portraits, rather than
ments of recovered medieval paintings and sculpture, that
stone sculptures from the are shown at the Hungarian
castles of the first Hungarian National Museum. These
kings are exhibited. provide a fascinating insight
As a rule, very few examples into the country’s history.
of Gothic and Renaissance art The Vasarely Museum has
survive in Budapest because of a collection of 300 works by
the pillage inflicted by the Turks Hungarian­born artist Victor
during their rule. How ever, a Vasarely. He moved to Paris in
fine collection of altar retables 1930 and became famous as
from the 15th and 16th one of the main exponents of Pablo Picasso’s Musketeer (1967), in the
centuries are on display in the the Op Art movement. Ludwig Collection

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