El Greco in Hungary

The Museum of Fine Arts of Budapest (Hungary) hosts and exhibition that wishes to pay tribute to the extensive patronage of Marcell Jánoshalmi Nemes (1866-1930), one of the most significant art collectors in early twentieth-century Hungary, as well as one of its most contradictory figures, whose extensive activities as both an art patron and collector became legendary during his own lifetime.

In the course of his career, Nemes donated numerous valuable works to the Museum of Fine Arts, including El Greco's The Penitent Mary Magdalene and Ádám Mányoki's Portrait of Ferenc Rákóczi, the latter being regarded as a national relic in Hungary. He also made donations to several other domestic as well as foreign institutions, such as the Museum of Applied Arts, the Berlin and Munich picture galleries and indeed even to the Prado in Madrid and the Louvre in Paris. With the donation of his collection of eighty works consisting exclusively of Hungarian paintings he contributed to the foundation of the Kecskemét Picture Gallery in 1911.

The material selected from Hungarian and foreign museums as well as from private collections illustrates the diversity and wealth of the former art collection of the famous "marchand amateur". The 120 exhibits include antique vases, medieval sculptures, the finest works of old Italian and Netherlandish masters, as well as valuable applied arts objects dating from various periods.

The exhibition also presents works by the emblematic figures of Hungarian fine arts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Mihály Munkácsy, Károly Ferenczy, József Rippl-Rónai, Pál Szinyei Merse, Béla Uitz, Károly Kernstok and János Vaszary, among others.

Date: until February 19.
Location: Museum of Fine Arts. Budapest. Dózsa György út 41, 1146 Budapest. Hungary.
Opening hours: from Monday to Thursday from 7.30am to 4pm. Fridays from 7.30am to 2pm.