THE DA VINCI CODE OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. THE BUDAPEST HORSE AND RIDER
date_range 27 October 2018

Múzeumcafé

The Budapest Horse and Rider, considered by scholars the best candidate among sculptures so far attributed to Leonardo, helps us imagine Leonardo’s sculptural oeuvre, otherwise existing only in theory. Opinions on the attribution of the statuette have changed so often in the last decades that it is time to make an assessment, for which the reopening of the Museum of Fine Arts and the chamber exhibition dedicated to the small bronze provide the perfect occasion.

On 31 October, along with the reopening of several of its permanent collections, the museum also presents a dossier exhibition entitled ‘Leonardo da Vinci and the Budapest Horse and Rider’. With drawings by Leonardo and reliefs by Giovanni Francesco Rustici, a sculptor of the next generation, Zoltán Kárpáti, curator of the exhibition illuminates why the Budapest small bronze is now associated with Leonardo. A book of essays by international scholars published on the occasion of the exhibition also contributes to our understanding of the intricate problem of the statuette. Being one of the most frequently requested objects of the museum, the significance of the Budapest Horse and Rider cannot be denied anymore. Next year it will be displayed on several exhibitions organized on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death.

(translated by Eszter Nagy)

The whole article is available only in Hungarian.

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