„…‘S haragszik, szenved, mint a ’Tragicus Schiller' büsztje…“. Önreprezentáció és kanonizáció Batsányi János és Gabriele von Baumberg portréiban

Abstract The best known and canonic portraits of the Hungarian poet János Batsányi (1763–1845) and his wife the Austrian poet Gabriele von Baumberg (1766–1839) were painted by the vice director of the Vienna art academy and director of the court gallery, Heinrich Füger (1751–1818) in the first decade of the 19th century. The surviving correspondence of the couple reveals that although formally the two portraits were made for private use, they deemed it important that after their deaths the portraits should become part of collective remembrance and posterity should cherish their memory through these images. The idealized and heroic character of Batsányi's portrait was recognized by the contemporaries, first of all Ferenc Kazinczy (1759–1831), a poet of extraordinary sensitivity to art. Sympathizing with the ideas of the French revolution and Bonaparte's rule, Batsányi lived in exile in Linz with his wife from 1816. In the late 1820s he sent his portrait home to his childhood friend László Juranics (1765–1850), parish priest of Értény, who hung it in a central place. The priest wrote to Batsányi that the painting had many visitors, which shows that it laid claim to some interim space between the private and public spheres. Presumably by Juranics's last will (whereabouts unknown) the painting was included in the National Museum, the pantheon of national culture, in 1851, just a few years after Batsányi's death. Though Batsányi promised his friend to send him his wife's portrait as well, he failed to do so. Her two portraits including the one painted by Füger showing her with the attribute of her vocation, the lyre, were discovered by a teacher from Kassa (Košice), Balázs Horváth (1858–?) in Linz who was searching for the memory of the literary couple. He mediated the portraits to bishop of Kassa Zsigmond Bubics (1821–1905) after whose death they went to the municipal museum. The canonization of the pictures was facilitated by the prints and photo reproductions in several 19th century Hungarian press organs and books