„Akit a sors kiemelt a többi festő közül” Schervitz Mátyás (†1771) budai Festő oltárképei
Authors: Korhecz Papp Zsuzsanna 
Published: March 2018

Mátyás Schervitz (Buda ? – Buda 1771) was a popular and highly esteemed artist in Buda-Víziváros in his time, as his epitaph also proves. The painter of Illyrian origin occurs by a variety of name forms in the sources: Scherviz, Scherwiz, Scherwitz, Scheravitz, Scheravics, Seravits, Scherevitsch, Scherevitz, Scherowitz, Schibiz, Szeravics, Xeravich. The hypothetical dates of his birth and death proposed by his first monographer Arnold Schoen (Mathias Tarvitz, c. 1701–1771, St Anne Parish Church of Upper Víziváros) can only be questioned in theory by the more recently discovered works painted in 1768–69, for the registers of the Franciscan Church of St Francis’s Wounds – to which the family presumably belonged – are latent at present.

The painter Schervitz became a registered citizen of Buda in 1741. He received several minor assignments (such as flag painting, gilding, marbling, ephemeral triumphal arches) and some greater jobs (paintings for the high altars of the St Catherine Church in Tabán and the St Elisabeth Church in Víziváros, and the fresco in the sanctuary of the Újlak church) in Buda, but these works have perished over the centuries. The ruined St Elisabeth altarpiece of the Capuchins of Víziváros (1760) is known from a photo. A documented work by his hand is the fresco decoration of the library room at the Ráday mansion in Pécel dated 1763. The St Ivo altarpiece of the Óbuda parish church (1759) was added to the oeuvre after style critical analyses, similarly to the sanctuary frescoes in the Church of St Francis’s Wounds (1756).

The key to the altar painting style of Mátyás Schervitz is provided by the altarpieces (St Anne, St Francis Seraphicus) in the former Franciscan church of Dunaföldvár painted in 1768 and certified with archival data. His Immaculate Conception with Adam and Eve in the same church was also identified by its style. With their help, the picture of the bye-altar showing the Stigmatization of St Francis in the former Franciscan church of Zombor (1769) and the high altar picture (1756), as well as the altarpiece of St Margaret of Cortona (1756) in the church of St Francis’s Wounds in Víziváros can now be safely attributed to him. These works help us recognize Schervitz’s brushwork on the altarpiece of the high altar in the former Dominican church of Pest (c. 1760) showing the founder of the order St Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin. The Guardian Angel altarpiece in the Franciscan church of Vác can also be recognized as his work. Research presumes that the artist working at such high level of quality was educated in Vienna; the clue to identifying his master lies perhaps in his faultless presentation of architectural space. Mátyás Schervitz applied the conventional baroque oil painting technique (canvas support built from several pieces, yellow ground, patch painting). His anatomical knowledge was excellent, his rendering of space virtuosic, his figures are lively, proportionately built and markedly characterized. He did not sign any of his so-far known works.