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| Sándor Liezen Mayer: Portrait of Archbishop János Simor, 1886 |
The collections of the Christian Museum are based on the private collection of Archbishop and Prince Primate János Simor (1813-1891). The intention its founder was to make known to the general public old and new treasures of art, and thereby cultivate the aesthetic taste of the visitors. Archbishop Simor purchased his works of art primarily from legacies and during his travels abroad. He also had the fragments of medieval altarpieces in disuse collected from the territory of the Archdiocese of Esztergom. On 12 October, 1875, the archbishop established the third public museum of Hungary by opening to all visitors his collection formed through such purposeful collecting activity. The first exhibition installed on the upper floor of the Cathedral Library included 206 pictures, mainly late medieval and 19th-century works. The Archbishop greatly enlarged his collection in the following years. His most significant purchase was that of the Bertinelli collection in Rome in 1878, through which the Museum acquired sixty, mainly Italian renaissance paintings. Further important acquisitions were the wooden sculptures and works of applied art bought in 1884 from the Schnütgen Collection in Cologne. After 1882, the enlarged collection was transferred to the second floor of the newly rebuilt Primate’s Palace on the Danube bank, where the permanent exhibition is still located. The first custodian of the picture gallery, Ferenc Maszlaghy prepared a catalogue in 1878, then—enlarging it with the new acquisitions—again in 1891. In 1887, János Simor ensured the future of the already very rich and valuable collection also from a legal point of view and entrusted it to the care of the Cathedral chapter of Esztergom. It was on this occasion that he gave it the name Christian Museum.
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| Gyula Benczúr: Portrait of Bishop Arnold Ipolyi (Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest) |
Following Primate Simor’s death in 1891, the Museum’s collections grew significantly only after World War I. Arnold Ipolyi, Bishop of Nagyvárad (1823-1886) made it possible in his will that his outstanding collection consisting mainly of late medieval Italian, German, Austrian and Hungarian paintings and sculptures should come into the possession of the Christian Museum in Esztergom. This however happened only after World War I (1920). Shortly afterwards, the Museum was enriched with a collection of entirely different nature, Count San Marco’s bequest that consisted mainly of works of applied arts and paintings (1925). Since then, the Museum continually acquires works of art through purchases and donations.
A complete catalogue of Museum, compiled by István Genthon, was published in 1948. From the middle of the 1950s, cataloguing with up-to-date methods of museology and scholarly publications began, and the concept of installation was renewed. The present permanent exhibition opened in 1973, after a four-year period of renovation.
