„A bérc vadászkalandora.” Strobl Alajos budavári Mátyás-kútja

The Matthias Fountain is the main attraction in the Hunyadi Courtyard of the Royal Palace in Buda Castle. From the beginning, its creators wanted to evoke the figure of the great ruler, closely linked to the castle’s historical past, and at the same time to “capture a scene from the life of this gallant and popular king”. The theme chosen for Alajos Strobl’s work was Matthias’ hunting and romance in the Vértes Mountains, the story of Beautiful Ilonka, perpetuated by Mihály Vörösmarty’s poem. Its predecessor was an earlier ornamental fountain Miklós József Esterházy had commissioned for the courtyard of Tata Castle. The unrealized fountain was to have featured Matthias in hunting clothes and Beautiful Ilonka as a fairy of the springs. While working on the Matthias Fountain for the royal palace, Strobl had the opportunity to further elaborate on the design, but in the new context the fountain also had the function of a historical monument, and he had to reconcile the hunting and the poetic moments of the legend of Ilonka the Beautiful with the image of the great monarch, which the monumental art of late historicism was shaping at the time and which was also embodied in the decoration and architecture of the royal palace itself.This image is closely linked up with the ideological changes at the end of the century, the redefinition of the nation’s position and role within the monarchy, and the tendencies of ethnic-cultural homogenization emphasizing the civilizational superiority and assimilative capacity of the Hungarian people. The memory of Matthias, who was always held in high esteem in Hungarian historical memory, also acquired new significance from the point of view of national self-esteem, since he was a strong-handed king of a populous country of predominantly Hungarian ethnicity, capable of conquests, during whose reign Hungary was able to play a dominant role as a regional power in the area and in Europe.The choice of the hunting scene was partly motivated by the memory of Matthias’s hunting grounds close by, which were often mentioned not only in scientific works, but also in popular publications on local history, hunting and tourism in the period. However, in keeping with the iconographic tradition of the hunting monarch, the sculptural group – going beyond the historical genre scene – also became a memorial to the great king, depicting and glorifying the virtues of his reign in the image of the skilful hunter who took noble prey.Matthias’s humanist contemporaries described him as handsome and virile, but the positivist historical research of the last third of the 19th century gave a disappointing picture of the king’s appearance, physique and features: they lacked Hungarian character and beauty. Artists who ventured into representing the historical past faced similar challenges to the moot points of the “Hungarian face” debate going on in ethnography and anthropology at the turn of the century. In terms of contemporary expectations of the Hungarian type and its expression as a reflection of national character, the Toldi figure in the Arany memorial was well received, and Strobl also reflected on the ideals of body politics associated with the modern sports movements and the emerging ideology of health and beauty.Compared to athletics, hunting is a centuries-old, aristocratic sport with historical associations, still the most popular sport of the ruling class and political elite at the end of the century, and therefore the holders of power could actually recognize themselves in the sculptural representations on the Matthias Fountain. Strobl modelled the king’s features on the head of the Bautzen statue of Matthias, while idealising and rejuvenating the king’s appearance. At the same time, by giving his face more angular and defined features, he emphasised both his youth and his mature masculinity. He modelled the splendid figure in a pose reminiscent of the contrapposto and arm position of Donatello’s and Verrocchio’s bronze David, further reinforcing the impression of a vigorous young stalwart.The obvious reference of the figure of Matthias to Florentine quattrocento art is a typical manifestation of the historicizing process, “historical art”, the purpose and content of which was explained suggestively by Miklós Szmrecsányi. He defined its creation as the mission of those artists who were capable of creating works that “revived the glorious traditions of the Hungarians, their glorious past under their national kings, in the spirit and language of their perished memories”. He also warned that the artistic endeavour should not be limited to “the recollection of external appearances, forced period accuracy, costumes and other archaeological bric-à-brac”, in objective detail, that is.Strobl, of course, immersed himself with relish in creating the characters, clothing and props of the king and his entourage. The richness of detail in the accessories must also have been inspired by quattrocento models, such as Donatello cramming the armour and saddle-cloth of the mercenary general Gattamelata in a similar manner. The most spectacular of the secondary figures is the Master of the Hunt, whose waistcoat bears a very similar embroidery pattern to the bone cover of the National Museum’s Hunyadi crossbow depicting a deer hunt, and whose costume is a mixture of elements from the Conquest-period and from folklore. The figure can almost entirely be circumambulated, and Strobl has connected the pose, which can be derived from ancient sculptures (Apollo Belvedere), with a distinctly spiral structure. The Master of Hounds, also almost entirely in the round on a rock near the viewer’s space, is a figure that takes its cues from the gigantic figure of the Danube in the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona in Rome. Outside the natural setting, on the left, on an independent architectural pedestal stands the Falconer, whose stance, together with his straight, rigid spine, his head raised with a phlegmatic expression on his face emanates detachment and serenity.Moving far away from the first version of the Tata fountain plan, Ilonka the Beautiful has clearly become a secondary character in the ensemble. She is no longer a nude fairy of the springs, but Strobl has given her a nymph-like look with a shock of long hair, simple sleeveless dress with front laces and bare legs. In 19th-century depictions, the sylvan nymphs are often depicted as erotic seductresses, captivating the hearts of the men who chance upon them or tantalising the satyrs who catch sight of them. Strobl has tried to recreate something of the nebulous love story in Vörösmarty’s poem, in which the forest is the scene of the lovers’ encounter and of erotic magic, rendered with balladic condensation. By depicting the king as a young man in love and Ilonka as a nymph-like, almost mythical creature, the sculptural group preserves something of the lyrical-romantic thread of the story, but the representation of historical reality undoubtedly marginalises it. Here, Ilonka is more of an attribute, a side character in a male-dominated world and history, an object of desire and seduction, a “representative prop of male power”.Despite being fixed to the wall, the stone coulisse in the semi-circular basin protrudes well into space, and the arc of the staggered placing of the figures traces a serpentine line extending into the courtyard. Strobl draws on this to unfold the narrative condensed into sculptural figures and to link the hunt with the love affair. At the same time, this line leads from a figure towering in the distance, composed mainly for a frontal view, to increasingly spatial, circular standing and seated figures, i.e. from a pictorial form accessible to the eye to figures that dynamically unfold and can be experienced as three-dimensional bodies.