Magyar történelmi témák 18. századi bécsi festői: adatok Wenzel Pohl munkásságához és az August Rumelnek tulajdonított mohácsi csata-képhez
Authors: Papp Júlia 
Published: September 2023

Media news made the name of Wenzel Pohl known in Hungary in the early 2000s, for the two large history paintings (The Battle of Mohács, Saint Stephen converting the Hungarians to the christian faith), which had cropped up in the art trade and which were purchased by the Hungarian state and deposited in the Hungarian embassy in Vienna, were attributed to him. Although more recent research has proposed that the painter of the cycle once consisting of six pieces was most probably August Rumel and not Pohl, it is worth knowing of Pohl’s artistic activity irrespective of the Hungarian relevance, too, because his person is gradually fading out of art historiography – for example, his name is missing from the 96th volume of the Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon published in 2017.

The best-known Pohl portraits are the ones he painted of the noted Jesuit astronomer, mathematician and physicist Miksa Hell. A full-figure portrait shows the scientist in traditional Sami costume during his research trip to the North, and we know of a portrait showing Hell is a monk’s frock. His engraved copies of paintings in the Viennese imperial collection, real forerunners to the representative 19th century album of prints presenting the collection, probably belong to a series. In the cycle of paintings about the coronation of Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor (Frankfurt, 1765) he was assigned the painting of architectural details, which is confirmed by the fact that he was sent on a study trip to Frankfurt to make drawn sketches of the venues of the event. After the representative painting of Martin van Meytens he made a small-scale version of the group portrait of Maria Theresa and her family. His chef d’oeuvre is the representative painting series showing the events of the coronation of Maria Theresa in Pozsony in 1741 painted for the Hungarian court chancellery in Vienna. He painted it with Franz Messmer in the second half of the 1760s. In contrast, the three portraits of monarchs in Riesensaal in Innsbruck so far attributed to him by researchers were actually painted by Jakob Kohl.

The other part of the paper contributes a few new viewpoints to the examination of the painting about the battle of Mohács earlier attributed to Pohl. In addition to contemporaneous woodcuts of the tragic battle of 1526 in news-letters and pamphlets in German, to 16th century Turkish miniatures, and diverse 16–18th century European manuscript and book illustrations, a ceiling fresco in Garamszentbenedek and several large paintings – including Rumel’s work – also conjured up the battle in the 18th century. Since in the nation’s historical consciousness and cultural memory the battle of Mohács did not acquire its symbolic, mythic position represented to this day before the 19th century, the two works of art were way ahead of their time in anticipating the salient position of the tragic event, because, unlike, for example, István dorffmaister’s late 18th century pictures ordered in Mohács, they show the battle as a fatal even in the history of the entire nation. on the other side, by the terminating piece of the series ordered for the Transylvanian court chancellery being the battle of Mohács, the client departed from the 18th century imperial, dynastic outlook which presented as positive parallels to the battle of Mohács and the capture of Szigetvár by the Turks the victorious battles of the late 17th century liberating war led by the Habsburg Empire: the second battle of Mohács and the recapture of Szigetvár, partly as examples of divine justice and partly as legitimation of the Habsburg Empire’s territorial expansion “earned with blood”. It is noteworthy that the right side of central scene of Rumel’s Battle of Mohács resembles the composition of leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari surviving in copies only. It is presumable that the renaissance battle scenes served as a model example for the painter.