Old Masters' Gallery Catalogues. Szépművészeti Múzeum Budapest. Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Volume 1: Portraits 1600-1800

The collection of Dutch Old Master paintings in the Szépm?vészeti Múzeum, Budapest, is one of the largest in the world outside the Netherlands and Belgium. This first volume of its catalogue raisonné series discusses one hundred and five Dutch and Flemish portraits from 1600 to 1800, an abundant and varied section of the collection. Represented are such great masters like Anthony van Dyck, Frans Hals, Thomas de Keyser, Bartholomeus van der Helst, and it includes fine works by leading portraitists from nearly all the famous centres of Dutch painting. The core of this material comes from the Prince Esterházy collection purchased in 1871, which was subsequently enriched by gifts and bequests of further Hungarian aristocrats and bourgeois collectors. Until recently the collection of portraits has been augmented through resolute or occasional aquisitions by gallery directors, starting with Károly Pulszky, Gabriel Térey and others. This volume is the first systematic overview of that special part of the Budapest collection, containing new achievements of research: several new attributions, names of sitters, and unknown data to the provenance of the paintings. The text is in English and Hungarian. Rudi E.O. Ekkart, director of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in the Hague, is the leading authority on seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish portraits, author of scholarly catalogues and co-curator of special exhibitions. He is professor of arthistory at the Utrecht University.