The German, Austrian and Hungarian Baroque collection of the Christian Museum is significantly smaller than the collections of medieval and Renaissance art. In the 19th century, in the time of the museum founder
János Simor, 17th- and 18th-century art was considered to be excessively exuberant, restless, and startling. Calm and well-balanced styles were far more appreciated, and this fundamentally negative opinion influenced the development of the baroque collection unfavourably. Simor became familiar with Austrian Baroque art already when he was bishop of Győr, through the work of the famous Franz Anton Maulbertsch, who frescoed the cathedral of that city. Of this great master, a debated work of the
Last Supper is shown at the permanent exhibition. It was acquired from the Archiepiscopal Seminary in 1962. Maulbertsch’s followers: Sambach, Leicher, Cimbal and Winterhalter are each represented in the collection by one or two works. The German Zick and Trautmann were followers of Rembrandt, the master of warm chiaroscuro effects, in the middle of the 18th century. Of Baroque sculpture, two finely executed, Hungarian or Austrian works from Vitnyéd in the west Hungarian Sopron County are exhibited.
I.K.Outstanding works of art in the collection:
