László Mravik

Plucked from the Abyss of Oblivion

The Collections of Miklós Jankovich, 1773-1846 (Illustrated)
Jankovich Miklós (1773 - 1846) gyűjteményei (The Collections of Miklós Jankovich 1773 - 1846). Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery, 28 November 2002 - 16 February 2003, Buda Castle. Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery, 2002, 413 pp.

 

It was thanks to Miklós Jankovich that it became possible to raise the material of the Hungarian National Museum to European standards. That includes not only museum items in the traditional sense of the term but also the library (at that time the two functioned together, as they did for a considerable time afterwards: the National Széchényi Library only left the hallowed walls when it acquired a new home in the Royal Palace in Buda Castle in the 1960s).
Jankovich had received a first-class education. Like almost every nobleman and the literati of the day, he studied law, but devoted all his time to collecting, which inevitably seriously inhibited his practice. The University of Nagyszombat (Tyrnau-Trnava), which had moved to Pest, following a decree by Maria Theresa, opened great vistas for him in his education. The teaching staff was exceptionally strong, a significant number of the foreign-trained outstanding historians, librarians, archivists and antiquarians were Jesuits. (The order was not long afterwards banned by Joseph II.) His teachers and tutors introduced him to every subject necessary for his later interests; later he acquired the collections of several of them. The formation in his lifetime of the first significant Hungarian archives had a beneficial influence on him as did numismatic plates and other specialist books and descriptions of a number of larger Hungarian collections. That was the time when the first great Hungarian historical compilations appeared, among which mention will be made of only the most significant, that of Márton György Kovachich (1744 - 1821), who was basically a legal historian, a scholarly publisher of sources and one of the most universally-spirited social historians of the age. From him and other outstanding scholars (György Pray, Dániel Cornides, István Schönwisner, Miklós Révai, etc.) Jankovich learnt respect for sources, and that led to his love of books, his painstaking collecting of old documents, and his assessment of works of art - as distinct from most of his contemporaries - with a care for their authenticity.
To this may be attributed the fact that the high proportion of copies and forgeries which deceived most contemporary collectors is not in evidence in his case, and hardly any forgeries came into his hands. He made occasional mistakes, but the forgeries that he accepted were only unmasked in recent times, and scholars treated them as originals for a hundred and fifty years. On the other hand, even those forgeries are to his credit, such as, for example, an aquamanile in the shape of a female head supposed to represent Athéné, undoubtedly the work of an artist of genius, now considered to date from about 1800.
Even on this question, however, despite all appearances, it is not certain that the last word has been spoken. Jankovich's few errors in no way detract from any assessment of his collection, of which one can speak only with praise and deep appreciation. Jankovich himself was not guilty of false modesty, and knew precisely the value of his collecting. He actually describes it in one of his appeals, and had the following text appended to the 1830 portrait engraving by Sámuel Lenhardt:

I have plucked from the abyss of oblivion the heroic deeds of our ancestors, their fashions and their works; I have tracked down their monuments that had been exiled, scattered throughout the world, by the tempestuous ravages of time, and, being fortunate enough to find them, have brought them home; sacrificing of my own life and wealth I have thus brought to new life that Hungarian dawn which had vanished from us, been forgotten, and was all but dead and buried.

His contemporaries felt his justifiable pride to be conceit, some envied him, others mocked him behind his back and slandered him. An even greater trouble is that to this day historians have misinterpreted the phrase "I have thus brought to new life that Hungarian dawn", and see in it support for the view that Jankovich was in his time a living fossil, driven only by nostalgia for the (supposedly) glorious past, the idea of the "noble nation", which rested on the mothball-scented society of the Estates and its feudal basis. Quite the reverse: Jankovich understood perfectly well the cultural mind-set of the years between 1780 - 1810, shaped by the delayed Enlightenment. All his writings and actions bear witness to the fact that from the start he collected with the intention of creating a collection for his country. From Ferenc Széchényi's donation onward, this pointed in the direction of the National Museum, both for Jankovich and for others.
Evidence exists that in the closing years of the 18th century Jankovich (whose father owned a collection of antiques and a library which attracted the attention of experts) bought several large and small objets d'art, primarily from the common nobility living in obscurity in Upper Hungary (such as Károly Fejérváry and Sámuel Székely of Doba). The flow of these objects to Jankovich's house in Pest, took place mainly in the years between 1805 and 1820, and it was at the beginning of this period that the 'infrastructure' was set up, and began to function as a motor for the whole of Hungary, and indeed Austria, Bohemia, Germany, and sporadically, North Italy too. We can be almost certain that his agents were also active in some regions of divided Poland, although the difficult circumstances pertaining there provided relatively few opportunities for the full exploitation of the region, rich though it was in relics of Hungarian association. The principal territory was, however, the larger towns and stately homes of Upper Hungary, the whole of Transylvania and Vienna, but Jankovich also succeeded in insinuating himself into the pictures of Hungarian relevance in the Fugger collection. Jewish dealers in precious metals did him the greatest service and, apart from the Esterházy treasure, his incomparable historical silverware and jewellery came to him through them. These middlemen (principally the Pest dealer Izsák Totesz, an expert with an educated eye) did not send off the gold jewellery, the coins and silver that was brought to them for sale to be melted down but offered it to Jankovich. Friendly though their collaboration was, their prices were less so, although it is true that for the most part they provided important pieces, among which were many enamelled items, and more than one with dozens, sometimes hundreds of diamonds and other precious and semi-precious stones. 

Meanwhile Jankovich succeeded in merging sizeable libraries with his own, the most significant to find its way onto his shelves being that of the Illésházy family. His aim in collecting books was the compilation of the Common Hungarian Public Library, what would be a canon of Hungarica today. Every book whose author, publisher, printer or binder - perhaps only falling into one of these categories - was of Hungary was guaranteed a place in it. At the same time there was also a place for any book whose subject was at least related to Hungary, even if no Hungarian could be shown to have had a hand in its writing, printing or publishing. There were many such among the Illésházy books, as there had been among Ferenc Széchényi's. Lesser libraries too aroused his interest if there were one or two notable volumes in them. The booksellers of Vienna, Pest-Buda, and Pozsony (Pressburg, now Bratislava) constantly kept Jankovich informed. It was clear that the avid collector was not prepared to forgo a good work of art or book. It is no surprise that he acquired Corvinas from King Matthias' famous Library (the Ransanus codex), but his Greek, Hebrew, Persian and Slavonic books accumulated, as did his considerable collection of prime quality German MSS from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. Mention should also be made of his magnificent collection of maps, among which were some outstanding early maps of Hungary.
Meanwhile, he also purchased weapons with significant historical associations, often connected with princes; these were mostly from Transylvania, and included Prince János Kemény's sabre and long-hafted battle-axe for mounted use. Some of the horse equipage must have merely served to fill gaps in the collection, suggesting the way that things had been. As, however, every stately home abounded with the like, and Jankovich was primarily anxious to collect items liable to be lost for ever, he paid them little attention. His coin collection too grew to a great size and contained ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine coins, together with specimens both from the Age of Migrations and of medieval date; his Hungarian collection, however, grew to almost near completeness by the standards of the time. He exchanged a goodly proportion of his ancient gold coins - and perhaps some money too - for old jewellery of Hungarian association that belonged to Count Mihály Viczay (1756 - 1831), but he never sold items from his Hungarian numismatics collection. He possessed the finest Hungarian coin of all time, the 100-ducat of Prince Michael Apafi I of Transylvania (1632 - 90, reigned from 1661) with its wonderful blend of the silversmith's craft and the highest art of the miniaturist, and in addition a whole range of Apafi's rare and brilliant coinage. The countless items in Jankovich's Müntzkabinett illustrated the whole of Hungarian history.
The formation of his collection of pictures, sculptures, bone-carvings and ivories proceeded, as far as we can judge, on a different course. He owned few pieces of sculpture, and those were chance acquisitions rather than the result of deliberate pursuit. Well informed though he was in the assessment of monuments of antiquity, he was less confident on medieval statuary. This may presumably explain why he acquired relatively few items, although he did obtain one splendid piece of work - a wonderful small marble Madonna by Andrea Pisano. The paintings belong to two categories: the first contains those of historical significance, most of which are portraits, rare of their type, but from the artistic point of view modest productions; the second, on the other hand, are pictures of unknown origin but artistically often of high quality.
In this regard one can only refer once again with the greatest approval to Miklós Jankovich's flair and imagination. He did not invest his money in the sort of thing that others would also buy, did not endeavour to acquire pictures of dubious origin and authorship that were adorned with great names. In some counties of Upper Hungary, however, he bought several dozen dismantled altar pieces, or fragments of them, things that awaited almost certain destruction. Each of these was Gothic in style, and as such both the fashion and art historians of the day considered them of little value, but Jankovich saw in them not merely works of art but documentary material which demonstrated the standard of medieval Hungarian panel painting. These works were produced in Upper Hungary, and although the artists were not necessarily ethnic Hungarians, still they reflect the high artistic culture of the country in the late Middle Ages, especially when we take into consideration the hard fact that in this regard the royal centre was the repository of authority and excellence. The counties of Turóc, Liptó and Sáros, together with the towns of the Szepesség region, where Jankovich obtained the great majority of these items, were classed as provincial, as the sphere of operation of artists of more modest ability compared to the central parts of the country. So great a collection of large-scale Gothic pictures may be regarded as a rarity, if not unique, in the whole of Europe in Jankovich's time.

The number of items in Miklós Jankovich's collection can no longer be established with complete certainty, as there was always a degree of fluidity and several items have been lost over the years. The greater part of his books were placed in systems of 'pure profile' by thoughtless subsequent librarians operating in the spirit of Prussian-style organisational principles. These, however, are trifles. From the point of view not only of quality but also of quantity, the collection is astounding. There were 197 richly decorated codices in the library dating from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, a great number of other manuscripts, parchment and paper codices (30 in Greek, some 200 each in Latin and German, of which 55 were parchment codices), a large part of which was exchanged for the Hunyadi archive, the return of which to Hungary was likewise associated with Jankovich. In addition there are many Slavonic codices, approximately 70 in number. The early printed books, however, are of unparalleled richness; the number of and sixteenth-century antiquities in German rose to almost 1,200; Bohemian and Polish works numbered approximately 1,000, and there were some eighty old books on Oriental subjects. The Hungarica material is almost complete, as is the collection of printed Bibles in Czech. Of the printed books some 12,000 are in Hungarian, 50,000 in other languages - and there are also many (several hundred) ancient maps, mostly dating from the sixteenth century, including the oldest engraved maps of Hungary. And so it goes on; space and time do not permit even a broad outline. There were also some 3,000 engravings. Let that be enough.
The numismatic collection was mainly composed of the following: 1,002 gold coins (almost 2219 ducats in weight-value; 978 survive); 2,300 silver coins; 6,020 other coins: 163 are Greek or barbarian, 1,622 Roman, 91 Byzantine, 2,883 Hungarian, 320 Transylvanian and 586 from other European countries; 451 are commemorative issues. A large number went to the Museum, but some items are missing and the reasons should be noted: these may have been exchanged, perhaps sold, or their provenance can no longer be established. This is beyond doubt the largest extant Hungarian numismatic collection; Count Viczay's was perhaps bigger and was of exceptional value, but it went abroad and has been broken up.
Jankovich's collection of silverware is one of the biggest in Hungary. Consisting of more than a thousand items, it contains 276 vessels, both ecclesiastical and secular, many of which are representative pieces and many others extremely rare, 490 pieces of jewellery and 318 rings. There are one hundred and ninety-two chalices and goblets. The greatest number of our finest pieces of historical silver jewellery have come down to us through him. Jankovich must have believed that they were mostly Hungarian - nineteenth-century expertise was unable precisely to define their origins - but we now know that many are by German, Austrian and Silesian craftsmen. The collection includes all sorts of silverware and the greatest variety of materials, including some rarities (serpentine, horn, semiprecious stones and many more); we can say 'all sorts' without the least misgiving. The number of related weapons is now relatively low, but even so there are almost two hundred items.
Statues, ivories, paintings, and other work in stone come to approximately two hundred. Every piece arouses attention, sometimes for its enigmatic nature, sometimes for its quality, sometimes for its particular flavour. And Jankovich, that pedantic systematiser, that illustrious representative of Romantic nationalism, prepared careful notes on every one of his pieces; the majority of these are still extant, and so light is shed on the origins of most items. The detailed account of the paintings has been lost, however, and only the bare catalogue remains. In brief, with his own rather dry but honest descriptions, Jankovich is to this day the principal support of the scholars that burrow in his collection. It is gigantic, and all together (including 6,000 official documents, his own family archives and his inventories) amounts to almost a hundred thousand items. It is difficult to appraise, but even looking at it all is more than enough for one man. Not to mention collecting, organising and - paying for it!

...

In 1824 the Archduke Joseph (1776 - 1847, Lord Lieutenant of Hungary in 1795, Palatine from 1796) visited Miklós Jankovich's house in Pest. The Palatine was in all probability aware of the significance of the collection, because in 1825 Jankovich made him the offer of purchase in an extraordinarily detailed official submission, to which the Palatine raised no objection (which confirms a previous and probably continuing agreement). Palatine Joseph was actually the only Habsburg whom Hungarians of all classes and generations respected and took to their hearts. Throughout his life the Archduke did all in his power to improve the economic and, most of all the cultural, circumstances of Hungary. The policies of the Court restricted him considerably as to the first, but the latter offered a wider field, especially when the cutting edge of the Hungarian Jacobin plot had become blunted. He secretly improved the situation of several of the prisoners who had been released after serving long sentences in the fortress prisons of the hereditary territories, one of whom, in his wider entourage, was employed as a tutor. This required not merely decency but courage too. We may conjecture from his methods that he loathed Francis's harsh absolutism and never made use of its apparatus, that he believed in compromise and the reconciliation of interests. As Palatine he was the ex-officio head of the National Museum, and as such regarded it his prime duty to advance its cause in every way. In this spirit he brought Jankovich's offer of sale before the National Assembly of 1825 - 27. This body, usually considered the first Reform Parliament, was mainly concerned with mulling over the grievances of the Estates and devoted itself to the expression of the mood of opposition to the Emperor which had been suppressed for almost fifteen years - for the most part, of course, without any result. From our point of view it is a greater shame that in the matter of the Jankovich collection too it accomplished nothing.
The Palatine was not, however, the sort of man to abandon so weighty a matter, and one so dear to his heart. He primed the counties that sent representatives to the next Parliament by appealing to their patriotism, and results were forthcoming. The Parliament that assembled briefly in 1830 authorised the Palatine to enter into contracts and to begin settling this business. The Parliament of 1833 - 36 finally voted the funds, and in so doing decided favourably on the future of the great new establishment. Thus it was enacted that Jankovich's collection be purchased on behalf of the National Museum for 100,000 silver forints, and that a further 25,000 be applied to the purchase of duplicate and third copies (coins and books). A further 500,000 silver forints were voted for the building of the National Museum. The Parliament, by then unequivocally in support of the Reform Party, showed unreserved enthusiasm for the Museum and accepted the Palatine's stipulation that the costs should be met from their own resources by the privileged Estates, the counties, the Free Royal Boroughs and the six chartered hajdú towns, and that they should not be passed on to the peasantry.
By this time the transfer of the mass of material was well under way, but as building work was proceeding slowly more places were found to accommodate the collection. It also had to be saved from the great and tragic consequences of the Pest floods of 1838, and had to be moved on other occasions too, until it finally found a home in the new building of the Ludoviceum, the Hungarian military academy in Pest, where it remained until the Museum was half built.
Jankovich overcame, for the most part, his financial problems and set about creating a second collection, but the indications are that passion got the better of sober calculation. He again acquired significant material, which was naturally not comparable with his first collection, yet had there not been the first this latter would be praised to the skies today. In 1844 he attempted to sell that also to the National Museum, but unfortunately without success. Before then, in 1841, the post of Director of the National Museum was advertised, and Jankovich himself applied. Previously the historian János Horváth, a man renowned for his startling dilettantism and who could not abide Jankovich personally, had directed the Museum, in 1837 and 1843 without a salary. It came as a great shock to Jankovich that not he but the colourless botanist and amateur historian Ágoston Kubinyi (1799 - 1873), a man mediocre in all respects and not exactly over-endowed with merit, was appointed. True, Jankovich was 71 at the time, a man of an indubitably difficult nature, worn down by other cares, and who was at the time not only the target of scorn but also often accused of profiteering at the expense of the state. Palatine Joseph too was growing old, and although his regard for Jankovich was unshaken (incidentally, the Habsburgs were always very civil to their subordinates even if they happened to hang them), he could not risk his appointment in the face of public opinion. The financial affairs of the sick and ageing collector again took a turn for the worse; after 1844 his affairs were in the hands of a sequestrator, and he had to ask him for even the daily sustenance of his family. Only death on 18 April 1846 released him from this humiliating situation. The Museum building was by then complete but it was not yet open to the public. After a long legal battle with the National Museum, the victorious Jankovich family put the second collection up for auction in Pest in 1852, in the family home on Hatvani utca. Ornate codices and silverware were the principal items, from which, thanks to the family's broadmindedness, the Museum, which had hitherto behaved in an indolent fashion, was at liberty to select, as we now believe, not really wisely. Most of the items were thus sold, and the majority, which included some exceptionally important early illuminated German MSS, were bought by foreign collectors and antique dealers. With this posthumous event Jankovich's career as a collector finally came to an end. From then on his fate has been oblivion and the random dispersal of his material.

László Mravik
is author of North Italian Fifteenth Century Paintings, Corvina, 1978, published also in Russian, French, German and Hungarian and The Sacco di Budapest and Depredation of Hungary 1938 - 1945, Budapest, 1998.