Mary the Virgin with the Holy Trinity,
Saints and The Donator
Art history
An altarpiece depicting Mary the Virgin with the Holy Trinity, Saints and The Donator has been lying forgotten for more than half a century in a bad condition in the attic of the St. Francis Church in Downtown Budapest. Its outstanding artistic quality came to light only after its restauration in 2015-2016 when it was compared with painting collections owned by the Hungarian State and churches. It is pointless to look for an evaluation or even a mention of the picture in art history literature. Only 19th century Franciscan church superiors took a note of the painting in a few, handwritten lines.
The commissioner of the painting is depicted in the lower right corner. He is looking at St. Mary, who is his intercessor in Heaven. Holy unmercenary Healer St. Pantaleon, wrapped in an ermine trimmed robe, is kneeling on the right of St. Mary. He is offering to the attention of St. Mary and the Holy Trinity the donator, who belonged to the fleeting, earthly world at the time of the painting of the altarpiece. The scholar who created the content of the picture must have been a humanist well versed in theology, or a clergyman. The dogmatic content is accompanied with a motif unprecedented in the history of European altarpieces: a 16th century copy of the translation of Dioscorides’ codex on medical herbs. That is why the meaning of the painting goes far beyond the spiritual topics, common in the era of Counter-Reformation: St. Pantaleon is drawing attention to a book of botany, which is placed next to the donator, while turning to the Virgin Mary.
The name of the 1st century Greek doctor and botanist Dioscorides is clearly visible on the right page of the open book in the forefront of the painting. The two flowers on the same page look like simple draft drawings. However, in the course of our research into botanical history, it soon became clear that they are a precise copy of the orchids printed in a translation of Dioscorides’ work by Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Siena, 1501 ̶ Trento 1578), published in the 1560s in several editions. Mattioli first published the edition where the herbs took up a full page in 1562. This was an edition in Bohemian. Thus the publication date of this edition is the terminus post quem of the creation date of the altarpiece. It is obvious that the altarpiece was painted after the publication of the Bohemian edition. The wood cuts of the illustrations in the Bohemian edition of 1562 and the Latin edition published at a later date were prepared based on the drawings of Giorgio Liberale.
We can only speculate as to the identity of the elegant, black-robed donator of the altarpiece. Based on the open book in front of him, the person must have been in a close connection with Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s translation of Dioscorides’s work. Venetian printer Vincenzo Valgrisi (about 1510 – 1573) published this work in more than sixty editions, or over 32,000 copies over the span of just a few years. As he noted in his last will, he amassed a fortune and won laurence for himself and his family with this work. Most likely either him or János Zsámboky (Sambucus) (1531-1593), the greatest Hungarian philologist and also the doctor of the Habsburg emperor in Vienna, was the commissioner of the painting.
The Luby family donated the painting to the St. Francis church of Downtown Budapest in 1868. There is a short note of the donation in the church’s inventory as well as in the Franciscan Chronicle (Archives of Franciscans), written between 1854 and 1884. It is possible that the donation of the picture was related to the serious illness of János Luby, brother of Zsigmond Luby. The latter was a chief notary and royal advisor. János Luby deceased in 1868, in the year of the donation, after a long medical treatment in Rókus Hospital, which was patronized by the Franciscans. We have no information on when and how the painting came into the possession of the Luby family.
When the altarpiece was found in 2015, a name and a date were discovered on its back: Jacopo Palma 1564. This inscription, however, is not on the original canvas but on a second canvas used for strengthening. It must have got there at the time of a previous restoration. After the cleaning of the picture it became obvious that the painter was not Jacopo Palma il Giovane of Venice but a painter from central or northern Italy whose style was influenced by Federico Barocci or Aurelio Lomi. Looking into the painting styles of the figures, probably two or even three hands worked on the altarpiece. According to several Hungarian and foreign art historians the execution date could be around 1600.
Conservation
The conservation of the picture took place at the Conservation Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts (MKE) in 2015 and 2016. Dóra Fekete, Judit Fiam, Edit Mikó and Rebeka Tiszai, students at the department, carried out the restoration work. Their tutors, Katalin Görbe, university professor and leading painting conservation specialist and András Heitler, department head and senior lecturer, led their work.
The painting was in a poor condition and in need of a serious conservation and restoration work when it got to the university.
Before the 2015-2016 conservation, the painting’s canvas had already been strengthened in the back at an unknown earlier date. A strong piece of canvas was glued to its back to support the original canvas. Damp storage conditions led to a shrinking of the second canvas and resulted in the deformation of the painting’s shape. At the most seriously damaged areas, the ground flaked off together with the paint, creating several empty patches. The layers of varnish covering the surface had turned dark brown. The figures and the composition can be hardly recognized; still they are of outstanding artistic quality.
To plan the course of conservation and restoration, it was indispensable to carry out a series of various photo-technological and scientific studies. Pictures have been taken of the painting under ultraviolet light, X-ray-radiography and raking light. The X-ray shots held a real surprise. A bearded man, the donator, became visible in the lower right corner of the painting. This figure was fully overpainted over the course of the centuries. Thanks to the X-ray images the painter’s working methods came to light: the master modified the picture several times while painting it. There are several such modifications, so called pentimentos in the picture such as the hands of St. Dominic, the hands of the donator, the head of the holy unmercenary Healer and the position of the figure of St. Mary were changing as the composition developed. The microscopic study of the paint layers and their composition provided informative details, helping separate the original parts from later interferences. After the testing of the pigments and binding media it cannot be ruled out that the painting originates from the 16th century.
The conservation work started with the stabilization of the loosened paint layer. After removing the remnants of the second, lining canvas and the glue from this canvas, we found no inscription on the back of the painting. This means the inscription of the name of Jacopo Palma was not copied to the second canvas layer from the first one.
The lower edge of the altarpiece, which is nailed to the stretcher is painted—the picture continues there, unlike at its other edges. This means that the painting originally must have been bigger than at present and a section of it was probably cut at its lower end.
The straightening of the wavy canvas took long weeks. The humidifying and the pressing of the painting yielded results, the canvas regained its original flatness. As the last step of the conservation process, the back of the canvas was impregnated with a synthetic consolidant.
The varnish layer was easy to remove after soaking but the removal of later corrections and overpainting needed a stronger solvent. Levelling out the empty patches with the paint layer was done by a special filling putty. Then, the smooth surface of the patches was adjusted to the surrounding original layer, imitating the structure of the canvas or the brush strokes. After the underpainting in watercolours varnishing came next, followed by the retouching with oil-resin glazes, the last step of the aesthetic reconstruction. That means the conservator adjusts the filled-in patches to the surroundings with tiny paint dots. As a result, the disturbing losses disappear; the work of art shows a unified appearance. After a final varnishing conservation is completed. The painting could take its place in the northern wall of the chancel, where it hung 148 years ago.
Donátor Alapítvány
1062 Budapest, Andrássy út 69-71.
(36-1) 342-1738/17
(36-1) 666-2517
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