During his decades at the National Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Miklós Szentkirályi has restored more than 120 works of art to a very high standard. His restoration work covers a broad spectrum – from medieval winged altars (Leibic, Kisieba, Csíkszentlélek), to large-scale paintings from the late 19th century (Mihály Munkácsy's Christ Trilogy), to public monuments (György Zala's sculptural group The Martyrs of Arad). During his career, he not only had the opportunity to work with the best of Hungarian art, but also to contribute to the preservation of works of art representing universal human values, created beyond our borders.
In his book Gránátalma a szárnyasoltáron. Egy restaurátorművész műhelytitkai (A Pomegranate on the Winged Altarpiece: Secrets from an Art Restorer's Workshop), published by Kairosz Kiadó in 2012, he reflects on his career and work as a restorer: “Through my work, I have embarked on wonderful journeys through time: I carved Gothic winged altarpieces in the workshop of Master Paul of Lőcse (Levoča), made the acquaintance of Master M. S. in Selmecbánya (Banská Štiavnica), assisted Ádám Mányoki at the court of the Great Prince, mixed paints in Maulbertsch's workshop in Szombathely, and measured out bitumen in Munkácsy's Paris studio. Later, I made a trip to Tahiti to tend black pigs with Gauguin, then wandered the streets of Paris with old Pissarro and became closely acquainted with Titian in Venice.”
By his own admission, the primary aim of a conservator is to preserve the cultural objects he is working on, and the practical basis is of course to know as much as possible about the history, condition and creative intent of the work, and in this activity an ethical approach is of the utmost importance.
He studied painting under Gábor Miklóssy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca), but in 1973 he married, moved to Hungary and obtained his diploma in art restoration from the Restoration Department of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, where his mentor was Dezső Varga. While still in his third year at the Academy, he began restoring the Resurrection scene on the Calvary Altarpiece by the so-called Master of Jánosrét. For his diploma project, he restored the early sixteenth-century St Anne Altarpiece from Leibic. From 1975, he worked for fifteen years as a restorer in the Old Hungarian Art Department of the Hungarian National Gallery. It was around this time that the collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Hungarian art was transferred from the former mansion to the Gallery, while the Old Hungarian Art collection was moved from the Museum of Fine Arts. The latter encompassed nine centuries of art, including an extensive collection of medieval winged altarpieces tracing the development of Hungarian Gothic art from the fourteenth century to the Csíksomlyó Altarpiece of 1543. In 1982, an exhibition of Gothic winged altarpieces drawn from this collection opened in the former Throne Room.
The gable of the Parish Church of St John the Baptist in Kisszeben had collapsed in the late nineteenth century. The subsequent restoration of its Annunciation Altarpiece was begun by Mór Holzer, a sculptor from Bártfa. Miklós Szentkirályi and his colleagues spent nearly a decade working on the restoration of this masterpiece.
In 1976, Miklós Szentkirályi was commissioned to restore two paintings by István Schaller. The works, The Visitation of Mary and The Ecstasy of St Francis, belonged to the Pannonhalma Archabbey Collection, as did Giuseppe Marchesi's The Queen of Sheba before King Solomon, on which he worked that same year, and Moses and the Bronze Serpent by Kremser Schmidt, which he restored the following year.
In the mid-1980s, he was occupied with compositions depicting Baroque figures (Fabrizio Santafede: Samson and Delilah; Martin van Meytens: Portrait of Dénes Bánffy; Unknown Artist: Portrait of Count Antal Esterházy, Kuruc General). In the second half of the decade, he single-handedly restored Ádám Mányoki's Portrait of Baron Gustav Adolf von Gotter.
Following his work on Zsigmond Vajda's ceiling painting for the Members' Lounge of the Hungarian Parliament and St Martin in the Light of His Miracles by Franz Anton Maulbertsch, who worked predominantly in Hungary, his attention turned to Netherlandish painting. In 1990, he restored a circular portrait of a married couple by Cornelis Engelbrechts, belonging to the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout's The Prophet Elisha and the Shunammite Woman.
In the early 1990s, he restored several landscapes (Ignacy Stanisław Witkiewicz: Winter Landscape in Zakopane; Roelant Savery: Rocky Landscape; Claude Lorrain: Villa in the Roman Campagna). Later that same year, he continued his career as head of department at the Museum of Fine Arts, where he worked on restoring works from the former Esterházy Collection by foreign artists, primarily Italian masters (two paintings by Francesco Fontebasso: The Magnanimity of Scipio and Antiochus and Stratonice; Paolo Domenico Finoglia: The Annunciation; Filippino Lippi: Madonna with St Anthony; Vicente Macip: The Lamentation of Christ). In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded the Mihály Munkácsy Prize in 1991.
He spent ten years working on Mihály Munkácsy's famous Christ Trilogy. The first painting he restored, together with his colleagues in 1993, was Golgotha, which was then on deposit at the Déri Museum in Debrecen. The painting had previously been rescued from a fire, suffered extensive damage and subsequently been overpainted several times. The 36-square-metre canvas had also sustained water damage during its transportation from America to Hungary. Its restoration took nine months, and the completed painting was unveiled at the Hungarian National Museum at Easter 1993. That same year, he also restored Paolo Veronese's Allegory of Venice. Two years later, in 1995, he restored Christ before Pilate, followed by José de Ribera's The Stigmatization of St Francis of Assisi. Restoration of Ecce Homo, painted in 1896, did not take place until 2009.
In 1996, he restored Eduard von Engerth's The Coronation of Francis Joseph I as King of Hungary in Buda in 1867 (on deposit from the Museum of Fine Arts and displayed at the Royal Palace of Gödöllő), as well as Pál Vágó's The Triumphal March of the Hungarian Hussars, belonging to the Museum of Military History. That same year, he received the Gold Cross of Merit of the Republic of Hungary.
Towards the end of the decade, he concentrated mainly on restoring paintings with biblical subjects, including Regnier van Gherwen's Christ before Pilate, Jacopo da Empoli's The Drunkenness of Noah, Vincenzo Civerchio's The Entombment of the Virgin Mary and Orazio Fidani's Lot and His Daughters.
Among his most notable restoration projects was Black Pigs, an oil painting created in Tahiti in 1891 by Paul Gauguin and one of the most valuable works in the Museum of Fine Arts' modern art collection. He had the opportunity to restore it in 1998. In 2001, he restored Camille Pissarro's Pont Neuf, painted around the same period.
One of the highlights of his career was his involvement in the restoration of György Zala's Monument to the Martyrs of Arad. The sculptural group commemorating this tragic event in Hungarian history was reconstructed in Firefighters' Square in Arad, under the direction of Tibor Kolozsi. In 2004, he restored Franz Eybl's Self-Portrait and Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch's privately owned painting Margit síel (Margit Skiing).
Titian's Madonna and Child with St Paul, believed to date from the first decades of the sixteenth century, resurfaced in Pécs in 2005 and was subsequently sold at an auction in Budapest for HUF 140 million. Ten years later, the Hungarian National Bank acquired it for HUF 4.5 billion. Miklós Szentkirályi restored the painting between May and October 2005.
In 2009–2010, he participated in the restoration of the iconostasis of the Basilica of Máriapócs as part of the European Faith and Health programme.
In the early 2010s, he restored The Last Judgement by the sixteenth-century painter Jacob de Backer in 2011, as well as Jacopo Bassano's The Annunciation to the Shepherds. Both paintings belong to the Museum of Fine Arts.
Miklós Szentkirályi is a leading figure in the field of art restoration, whose decades of work extend far beyond the physical conservation of artworks. As the founding president of the Hungarian Chamber of Restorers and a member of the executive board of the National Association of Hungarian Creative Artists, his organisational and professional contributions have also been indispensable to Hungarian and international fine art.
[2017]