January 16, 2011: Munkacsy Trilogy and St. Matyas Church

January 16, 2011: Based on comments I have heard from a number of friends, I decided to see the Munkacsy Trilogy which is on display in the Hungarian National Art Museum in the Buda Castle. On the way to the museum, I saw an area of the castle that is under construction since the castle was heavily damaged during the war. I was surprised to see the elaborate catacombs that must be under the castle. You can barely see them in the following photo;

Catacombs at Buda Castle

Mihalyi Munkacsy was an artist in the late 1800's and at different times throughout his career painted three paintings of Christ: Christ Before Pilate (1881), Golgotha (1884), and Ecco Homo! (1896). These gigantic paintings were shown with many charcoal drawings and other oils that Munkacsy created in preparation for painting these masterpieces. What was amazing to me were the varying expressions of the people surrounding Christ in each of these paintings; all the women were in obvious horror witnessing the demise of Christ, while all the men were portrayed as yelling defiantly at Christ or else showing no interest in what was going on in the painting as if there were other things they had to tend to. Although these paintings normally are displayed at different art institutions, they have been brought together for exhibition for several years now. 

Christ Before Pilate by Munkacsy

Ecco Homo! by Munkacsy

Golgotla by Munkacsy

(Note: I did NOT take the three pictures above with my camera -- I obtained them using Google). After spending quite some time looking at these paintings, I visited the rest of the enormous museum (which I had last visited in August). After spending quite some time in the rest of the museum, I returned to the Munkacsy exhibition area and saw that there were a number of other works of Munkacsy on display. Many of these paintings were mixed with those of Paal Laszlo (who, by the way is the great great great (great?) uncle of a friend of mine at JPL named Laszlo Paal). 


After leaving the museum, I decided to visit St. Matyas Church since the day was still fairly bright and  I could therefore get some good pictures inside the church. On the way, I got a good shot of a large statue in front of Buda Castle and of the gate separating Buda Castle from the area of the hill to the north of the castle.

Buda Castle

Statue in front of St. Matyas Church

St. Matyas Church

St. Matyas Church

Window in St. Matyas Church

Altarpiece in St. Matyas Church

St. Matyas Church

Pulpit in St. Matyas Church

St. Matyas Church

It was great to have seen Munkacsy and St. Matyas Church. I'll have to revisit the museum more often in the future since entrance is free to teachers.