Old Masters' Gallery Catalogues. Szépm&üvészeti Múzeum Budapest. Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Volume 2: Still lifes 1600-1800

Today still life is popular with both by museum visitors and art collectors. After a period of relative neglect research on this subject has intensified since the 1960s. The genre constitutes a significant section of the Dutch and Flemish collection of the Old Masters’ Gallery of the Szépm?vészeti Múzeum in Budapest. The collection includes all subcategories: flower, fruit and banquet pieces, hunting trophies, kitchen and pantry interiors, and pictures of live animals, and presents an excellent overview of the development of still life painting. Among the ninety-five works discussed in this volume are masterpieces by prominent still life specialists such as Jan Fijt, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Pieter Claesz., Willem Claesz. Heda, Willem Kalf, Abraham van Beijeren, and Willem van Aelst. as well as fine works by lesser-known masters, including Andries Benedetti, Frans Ryckhals, Jan Treck, and Jan van der Heyden. Several of these ninety-five paintings come from the collections formed by Hungarian aristocrats during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the Esterházy collection, bought by the Hungarian State in 1871, for instance, included 12 excellent pieces. The main part of the still lifes in the Budapest Museum, however, has been acquired thanks to the decisive attitude of museum curators. Ildiko Ember, chief curator of the Old Masters’ Gallery, is specialized in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting. She is the author and editor of several collection and exhibition catalogues. and was the organizer of a special exhibition devoted to the Budapest collection that toured the US in 1989–90. She had been publishing on various types of still life since the 1970s; this volume presents the latest results of her research. Three entries were written by Fred G. Meijer, an acclaimed scholar of still life painting, who here publishes his new findings on these pieces. The text is in English and Hungarian.