THE COLLECTION OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE PLASTER CASTS OF THE BUDAPEST MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

The aim of this study is to give a brief overview of the creation and history of the plaster cast collection of medieval and Renaissance sculptures of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. It will present how the collection was conceived and assembled, compared to similar collections of plaster reproductions in Europe and the United States, as well as who and why urged its creation. The study also examines contemporary notions and trends that influenced its conception and display. Finally, it outlines the fate of the collection after 1945.

The relevance of the subject is highlighted by the fact that collections of plaster cast reproductions held by academies, universities and museums have once again become the centre of scholarly attention. The modern history of cast collections assembled in a museum environment is however distinct from the history of replicas created centuries before at academies of art, solely for educational purposes. Museums of fine arts and applied arts built their cast collections during the second half of the nineteenth century, based on ever more strict professional criteria, and with a different purpose in mind: to present masterworks of a certain period in art history to the public as exhaustively as possible. The creation of a replica collection of medieval and Renaissance works was unique in the Hungarian museum environment; its evaluation, however, goes beyond the scope of the this study.

Cast collections all over the world are not merely considered to be objects of some historical-documentary value, but also works of art of considerable aesthetic merit. Compared to collections of plaster cast reproductions of masterworks of ancient Greek and Roman art, collections of medieval and Renaissance replicas, which appeared in this form only in the second half of the nineteenth century, are little known. Besides serving as educational tools or models in the training of art students, medieval and Renaissance casts became part of displays in newly founded art museums all over Europe, just like their antique counterparts.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND MODELS

In the second half of the nineteenth century, one of the most active figures in organising museums and collections was Wilhelm von Bode, a German art historian and curator. It is a little known detail of his lifework that from the 1870s, he played an important role in spreading the canon of cast collections assembled on a professional basis. Thanks to Bode’s contribution, the medieval and Renaissance plaster cast collections became the biggest replica collections by the 1880s.¹ It was also Bode who managed to persuade the Italian government to lift the ban on replicas, originally introduced to protect national monuments. As a result, the formatore ateliers in Milan, Rome and Florence switched to large-scale, industrial-like production, and copies of Renaissance artworks quickly spread throughout European museums. These copies were made in the manufactories of Carlo Campi in Milan, Gherardi in Rome, or Giuseppe Lelli in Florence, and could be ordered from catalogues. Such a replica workshop [Gipsformerei] was founded in Berlin too, in 1819, and has been part of the Berlin museums scene since 1830, also paving the way for identical plaster casts to appear in collections all over Europe.²

It is important to add that no matter how large a quantity of plaster replicas the imperial workshop produced, Bode’s attitude towards them remained ambivalent, which is reflected in one of the reminiscences of his autobiography entitled Mein Leben. In it Bode mentions with regret that during one of his tours to England, in the heyday of building museum collections, he would have had the opportunity to acquire the famous Michelangelo and Raffaello drawings owned by Sir Thomas Lawrence well below their actual prices, but his request was rejected at the highest ministerial level: the desired sum was already allocated for the purchase of classical ancient plaster copies.³

One of the richest plaster cast collections in Hungary, which also contains a considerable number of well-preserved medieval and Renaissance replicas, is the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts. In 1897, the three experts (Gábor Térey, Lajos Rauscher and Ernő Kammerer) who did the lion’s share of setting up the future Museum by developing its organisational structure, professional conception and acquisition profile, visited 65 European museums and exhibition halls, with the purpose of finding models to be followed by the new museum founded in the year of the Millennium, 1896, and to be built shortly after.⁴ Among these museums, the most significant cast collections – which can be considered as immediate examples for, or parallels with, the plaster copy collection in Budapest – had been created in such institutions as the previously mentioned one in Berlin, the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria and Albert Museum) in London, the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris, or the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Besides Berlin, the canon of medieval and Renaissance replica collections was fundamentally shaped by the South Kensington Museum in London. Although it still houses the most important cast collection worldwide, it never had its own replica workshop. The medieval and Renaissance replica collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum owes its creation – which took place in the institution’s heyday – to the work and efforts of John Charles Robinson,⁵ the advocate of the then popular Gothic revival, and of Henry Cole, a lover of Renaissance art. The collection is still on display today in a separate wing of the building. Another great merit of Cole’s is that in 1867 he founded an institution called The Convention for Promoting Universal Reproductions of Works of Art for the Benefit of Museums of All Countries. The Convention, whose fifteen signatories included Europe’s leading monarchs, aristocrats and most important private collectors, was a sort of “barter agreement” which stipulated that the museums and collections concerned could exchange plaster copies among themselves and make replicas of each other’s artworks. This necessarily implied a certain canon of what were considered masterworks, which in turn resulted in a great similarity of the most important European cast collections at the end of the nineteenth century.⁶

Among collections of plaster casts of medieval and Renaissance artworks, the Musée de Sculpture Comparée, which opened its rooms in 1882 in the western wing of the Palais du Trocadéro, holds a special place. The museum was created with only one purpose in mind: to legitimise national art by drawing a parallel between medieval French sculpture and classical antiquity. The founding father of the concept was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who in 1855 made a proposal to create a museum gathering plaster reproductions of the most important medieval monuments of French sculpture and architecture. His project was finally accepted in 1879 by the minister of education, Jules Ferry. The plaster cast workshop established in the cellars of the Trocadéro contributed greatly to the enlargement of the collection. The most important growth took place under the direction of Camille Enlart (1903–1927), by the end of whose directorship the museum housed nearly 7,000 replicas, mostly of French originals.⁷

The golden age of state-founded museums happened between 1874 and 1914. In the words of Alan Wallach, it was the age of “cast culture”, that is to say the collections of American museums consisted mostly of casts. So much so that the history of American art museums before 1900 actually corresponds to the history of their cast collections.⁸ Among these museums, the Boston Athenaeum, founded in 1805,⁹ was the first to assemble a large cast collection by the end of the 1870s, based on moulds of the South Kensington. By 1895, the Metropolitan in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia had also acquired considerable cast collections. But these quickly set up collections were soon accused of being anachronistic and obsolete. At the Metropolitan, it was Pierpont Morgan whose arrival in 1904 marked a change in the acquisition policy, and who urged the museum to acquire originals. This sudden shift in the museums’ policy was also accelerated by the appearance of such influential figures as Bernard and Mary Berenson, Joseph Duveen or Isabella Stewart Gardner on the international art scene.¹⁰ The end of the “plaster age” was marked by the debate, aptly called the “battle of the casts”, that broke out in Boston in 1895 around the question of whether the new museum should house copies or not, and went on until 1909.

The Budapest Museum of Fine Arts began ordering casts and assembling its collection when plaster replicas on display in the big European and American museums were already at the centre of heated debates; indeed it was questioned whether they were displayable in museums at all. Parallel to the material of the Museum of Fine Arts, the replica collection of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow was taking shape too, also well behind its time. The museum was created as a result of the joint efforts of the patron of arts Yury Stepanovich Nechaev-Maltsov, the university professor Ivan Tsvetaev and the architect Roman Klein. Since the founders wanted the institution to primarily assist tertiary education – being at the same time open to the public –, the ideal of universality triumphed over the need for originality. The museum’s present arrangement still reflects the original intention of the founders, in that casts and originals are presented in two separate wings of equal size. By the museum’s grand opening in 1912, the collection of plaster-cast reproductions of masterworks of European art (classical, medieval, and Renaissance) had been fully completed.¹¹

The cast collection of the Museum of Fine arts was assembled as part of a similar process. The director of the National Gallery, Károly Pulszky, in his conception of the Museum of Fine Arts written in 1894, and later Gyula Wlassics, Minister of Cults and Education, in his Report published in 1900, describe the future sculpture collection in basically the same way. According to both conceptions, the collection should be aimed at presenting the history and development of sculpture from the beginnings until the 19th century. As this was not possible exclusively through original artworks, the hiatus was to be filled with plaster casts. “This department, if it is completed one day, will present the evolution of sculpture by way of replicas and originals, from the oldest monuments, through Greek and Roman art, then through the early Christian, Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance period, until recent times, including the present day. Architecture – partly as an ancillary to plastic art through its decorative and constructive elements – will also be depicted in its entire evolution, in the form of copies, models and photographs of its most characteristic works of art.”¹²

THE COLLECTION OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE PLASTER CASTS OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

In his 1894 conception of the Museum of Fine Arts, Károly Pulszky did not discuss the display of original artworks separately from that of copies – an approach already quite unusual by the end of the century –, his prime objective having been to create a collection which would present the entire history of plastic art. However, the issue of originals versus plaster copies soon presented itself on the practical level: it so happened that the architect who designed the building of the Museum of Fine Arts on Heroes’ Square, Albert Schickedanz, created a museum less meant to host specific works of art than to continuously expand and aspire at universality. As a consequence, the museum later struggled with lack of space. Gyula Wlassics’s Report from 1900 on the progress of planning, construction and collection building was still optimistic: he thought that according to the plans, the space would be sufficient to accommodate the works of art already acquired and to be purchased in the future.¹³ The report outlined plans for four halls, which would display European and Hungarian sculpture from the early medieval period until the Baroque, through both copies and originals. In his Report Wlassics even gave a list of the masterworks the copies of which should be acquired, and many of them were actually commissioned, like the well of Moses from Dijon, the golden gate of the Freiberg Cathedral, the “carvings” of the Bamberg Cathedral, and the equestrian statues of Gattamelata and Colleoni.¹⁴

In accordance with the practice of the time, the great halls and rooms of the ground floor of the Museum of Fine Arts were destined to display works of art of European and Hungarian sculpture. Most of the spaces intended for casts and statues were opened in 1906,¹⁵ although they were almost empty, without any objects on display.¹⁶ It is to be noted that plaster copies were later put on view not only in the great halls but in the two inner courts as well.¹⁷

It seems that there are no extant photos or documents of the Baroque Hall from the period; we do not know what works of art were displayed in it or in what manner – but we do know that no plaster copies were made of Baroque and eighteenth-century works.

There is one coloured photo from about 1912–13 of the Marble Hall that survived, which depicts the Cantoria or Singing Loft of Luca della Robbia of Florence in the axis of the hall, above the huge door.¹⁸ The loft functioned as an element of the architectural space, while on the floor copies of ancient, medieval, Renaissance and modern works were on display, juxtaposing different periods of art history.

As for the arrangement of the casts intended for the Renaissance Hall, we have a draft from around the turn of the century by the director of that time, Gábor Térey. The installation and inauguration of the hall took place in 1913. The centre of the Renaissance Hall used to be occupied by the replica of the monumental equestrian statue of Colleoni.¹⁹ We have a photo from 1913 which shows the hall already populated with copies of Renaissance works.²⁰ We find among them replicas of masterworks by Duccio, Rossellino, the Robbia atelier, Andrea Bregno, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco, Brunelleschi, Donatello, the Pisanos and Matteo Civitali. The Michelangelo Hall was also opened at the same time, in 1913, which housed only copies of works of the Florentine master (the Tomb of the Medicis, the statue of Moses and the Pietà of the Vatican).²¹

The covered court on the left, today referred to as the Romanesque Hall, was opened in 1906, in which the architectural space, the iconography of the wall paintings and the sculptural works planned to be on display (both originals and copies) constituted a coherent whole.²² The plaster replicas that were put on view in a functional way became integral parts of the hall, like for instance the golden gate of Freiberg²³ and the capitals or the gate from Gyulafehérvár. According to a monograph on the history of the museum published in 1956, the exhibition hall was opened in 1908 with the artefacts on display.²⁴ There is a photo dating from 1913 which shows the hall with antique, late Romanesque, Gothic and early Renaissance copies crammed together, with Hungarian and European monuments arranged side by side: the statue of Gattamelata, the well of Moses from Dijon, the Siena Cathedral pulpit by Pisano, the baptismal font from the Hildesheim Cathedral, and the altar from Kisszeben (now in the Hungarian National Gallery).²⁵ The exhibition space received severe criticism at the time: “thus packed side by side, they cannot tell us much about the original statues, not more than pressed flowers of a herbarium can tell about nature”.²⁶

Unfortunately, despite the will and the plan, the plaster copies of the Romanesque Hall were not arranged in such a way as to present the European and Hungarian material by periods, but were rather grouped together in an aestheticising manner, to create a certain atmosphere. The following critique was published in the columns of the literary journal Nyugat [West] in 1913: “Huge canvas walls and scaffolds have been concealing some of the rooms of the Museum of Fine Arts from our eyes for some years now. The public can only rarely, through the gaps of the canvas walls, have a glimpse of the Herculean work carried out by the museum’s casters, who populate and decorate the floors and walls of the big halls with copies of famous statues and reliefs of the history of art. They constantly open and re-close the corridors leading to the halls, they adjust, repair and carry away the plasters. Their whole activity suggests the exclusiveness and irresponsible power of some mysterious mechanism, as well as a sense of awe-inspiring superiority which keeps away, nay scares off the intrusive curiosity of profane eyes.”²⁷After several rearrangements and arrangements of the new arrivals, a mature exhibition of the plaster casts, disposed according to different periods, had been finally realised by 1926 in the Romanesque Hall, which could be seen until 1945. The new layout of the plasters was carried out by Andor Pigler, under the direction of the museum’s director, Elek Petrovics.²⁸ Although the size of the hall and the already built-in elements still posed a problem, Pigler tried to be faithful to the organising principle and keep casts belonging to the same period and nation together.²⁹ It was in the spirit of the same guiding principles that the tympana, pillars and other fragments of the Bamberg, Nürnberg and Strasbourg Cathedrals, the baptismal font of the Siena baptistery by Jacopo della Quercia, the Gattamelata by Donatello, the monumental trumeau and jamb statues of the Reims Cathedral, the Calvary group of Wechselburg, or the cenotaph of Ulrich Stifften were all brought to the Romanesque Hall.³⁰ The hall was repainted and the casts were labelled. A photo from 1927 clearly shows the new arrangement in the Romanesque Hall: in its western part, works are displayed in a rational order, presenting a certain period: the Bernward Column, the baptismal font from Hildesheim and the reliquary of St Sebaldus are symmetrically arranged around the Golden Gate.³¹

During the Second World War, both the hall and the cast collection suffered serious damage, and about half the collection perished. When the museum was hit by a bomb in 1945, the roof of the Romanesque Hall was severely damaged. After the war the hall was definitively closed from visitors and was used as a storage space instead. In 1954, a survey and plan were made by Középülettervező Vállalat [Public Buildings Planning Company] to facilitate the presentation of the cast collection as well as the old collection of Hungarian art.³² The aim of the project was to create new spaces under the museum building in order to make the storage and display of the material possible.³³ Unfortunately the collection was not put on view after all: it was confined to the Romanesque Hall, which remained inaccessible to the public.

Specific items or ensembles of the cast collection have been requested and received on long-term loan or deposit by different institutions. This is how most of the Michelangelo copies were brought to Kecskemét in 1974 to be displayed in the House of Science and Technology, whereas the Hungarian material was taken over by the Hungarian National Gallery. In 1985 most of the Romanesque Hall was attached to the Old Master Paintings Gallery and as a consequence an open shelf system was installed there to store the paintings, so the plasters became even more crammed on the floor and on the wooden shelving around the walls.

Although there were several attempts at rehabilitating the medieval and Renaissance plaster cast collection, for a long time only parts of the plan were realised: a few restored items were put on view from time to time at temporary exhibitions or outside Budapest.

With the 1990s a new and indeed a more promising chapter began in the history of the collection. By then the condition of the plasters greatly varied: some were almost intact, others severely damaged or ruined.³⁴ Visitors were again reminded of the neglected collection by a temporary exhibition in 1999 entitled “Doubles of Masterpieces”. Another fifteen years had to pass until the restoration of the entire replica collection was begun, which inevitably corresponded with the renovation of the Romanesque Hall. According to the plan, after the completion of the works in 2018, casts will be transferred to the exhibition rooms of Fort Csillag in Komárom and to the rehabilitated visible storage rooms of the National Restoration and Storage Centre (Restaurálási és Raktárközpont, OMRRK) in Szabolcs Street, together with the antique casts. Thus the collection will be open to the public once again and put on show in an adequate way – but unfortunately snatched away from its historical context. This inevitably raises the question of reinterpreting the function of the museum’s halls and supposes the redefinition of their original purpose

In the winter of 2015 visitors could come and see the Romanesque Hall for one night and have a glimpse of a portion of the past: an old venue in its state of seventy years before. Following this event, the renovation of the Romanesque wing and the restoration of the removed medieval and Renaissance cast collection have started.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The study attempted to give an idea of the unique history of the collection of medieval and Renaissance plaster-cast replicas of the Museum of Fine Arts during the past hundred years. The collection was evidently behind its time: during its creation, similar collections in Europe and the United States were already relegated to storage rooms or kept only for educational purposes. In the interwar years, the Hungarian collection remained on display but served more and more didactic purposes. The fact that the sculptural and architectural material were mixed together indicates that at the time the collection was arranged, the separation of fine arts from applied arts was not a consideration. The simultaneous presentation of replicas of international and national works reflects an earlier concept aiming at universalism, characteristic of the great museums during the 1870s and 1880s.

When in 2018 the collection will be finally displayed in its own spaces for the first time in its history – like its great European counterparts in London, Berlin and Paris, mentioned at the beginning of the present study –, it will finally be presented in an adequate way, emphasising its aesthetic merits over its mere documentary value.
 

Translation by Orsolya Németh

1 It was originally put on display in the Neues Museum, then in 1905 it was handed over to the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum (now known as the Bode Museum). After being exhibited for a short period, the collection was put away in the museum’s store rooms. Edit Szentesi: “Szobrászattörténeti másolatgyűjtemények a Magyar Nemzeti Múzeumban a 19. század utolsó harmadában. I. Pulszky Ferenc görög szobrászattörténeti másolatgyűjteménye” [Replica collections from the history of sculpture in the Hungarian National Museum in the last third of the 19th century. I. The replica collection of ancient Greek sculptures of Ferenc Pulszky]. In: Művészettörténeti Értesítő 55, 2006, 49, n. 36. See also: Claudia Sedlarz, “Incorporating Antiquity – The Berlin Academy of Arts’ Plaster Cast Collection from 1786 until 1815: Acquisition, Use and Interpretation”. In: Rune Frederiksen and Eckart Marchand (eds.), Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2010, p. 211.; Sibylle Einholz, “Orte der Kontemplation und Erziehung: Zur Geschichte der Gipsabguss-Sammlungen in: Berlin”. In: Hartmut Krohm (Hrsg.), Meisterwerke mittelalterlicher Skulptur. Die Berliner Gipsabguss-Sammlung. Berlin, 1996, p. 29. Frank Matthias Kammel, “Die Sammlung der Abgüsse von Bildwerken der christlichen Epochen an den Berliner Museen”. In: Hartmut Krohm (Hrsg.), Meisterwerke mittelalterlicher Skulptur. Die Berliner Gipsabguss-Sammlung. Berlin, 1996, pp. 49, 64.

2 The digitalised version of the original catalogues is available at the following link: http://ww2.smb.museum/GF/index.php (Last downloaded: 09. 12. 2012.) The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest also ordered a lot of its plaster casts from these catalogues.

3 Wilhelm von Bode, Mein Leben I, Berlin, p. 1930, 71. Quoted in: “Jeremy Warren, Bode and the British”. In: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 1996, p. 122.

4 Ferenc Tóth, Donátorok és képtárépítők. A Szépművészeti Múzeum modern külföldi gyűjteményének kialakulása [Donators and Creators of Galleries. The Creation of the Modern International Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts]. Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 2012, pp. 66–75.

5 Anthony Burton, Vision and Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 1999, pp.

6 Pamela Born, “The Canon is Cast: Plaster Casts in American Museum and University Collections”. In: Bulletin of the Art Libraries Society of North, 2002, Vol. 21, p. 8.

7 Jean-Marc Hofman, “The Cast Collection of the Musée des Monuments. ‘A Panegyric of the French Heritage’”. In: Rune Frederiksen and Eckart Marchand (eds.), Plaster Casts. Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present. De Gruyter, Berlin, 2010, pp. 11–15.

8 Alan Wallach, Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on the Art Museum in the United States. The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1998, p. 48.

9 Pamela Born, “The Canon is Cast: Plaster Casts in American Museum and University Collections”. In: Bulletin of the Art Libraries Society of North, 2002, Vol. 21, p. 8.

10 Alan Wallach, Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on the Art Museum in the United States. The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1998, p. 50.

11 V. N. Tiazhelov, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts: Guidebook. Moscow, 2008, pp. 18–25.

12 Gyula Wlassics: A Vallás- és Közoktatásügyi M. Kir. Minister Jelentése a Szépművészeti Múzeum ügyében [Report of the Minister of Cults and Education on the Museum of Fine Arts]. Budapest, 1900, pp. 2–3.

13 Ö. Gábor Pogány – Béla Bacher, A Szépművészeti Múzeum 1906–1956 [The Museum of Fine Arts 1906–1956]. Budapest, 1956, p. 30. See also: Gyula Wlassics, A Vallás- és Közoktatásügyi M. Kir. Minister Jelentése a Szépművészeti Múzeum ügyében. Budapest, 1900, pp. 7, 16.

14 Gyula Wlassics, A Vallás- és Közoktatásügyi M. Kir. Minister Jelentése a Szépművészeti Múzeum ügyében. Budapest, 1900, p. 8.

15 Ernő Kammerer, “A Szépművészeti Múzeum” [The Museum of Fine Arts]. In: Művészet, 1906/5, No. 3, pp. 147–8.

16 The installation of the Golden Gate of Freiberg took place at the turn of 1906/07. See the Archives of the Museum of Fine Arts, document No. 31/917.

17 A közép- és renaissance kori gipszgyűjtemény, kat. és rend. [The Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Plaster Copies]. Exhibition Catalogue by Zoltán Oroszlán, Elek Petrovics, Andor Piegler. Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 1926, pp. 19–21.

18 Imre Takács, Remekművek alteregói: Régi gipszöntvények. Kiállítási katalógus [Doubles of Masterpieces. Old Plaster Casts. Exhibition Catalogue]. Budapest, 1999, p. 2.

19 Budapesti Szemle [Budapest Review]. 1908, p. 378. sz. 452.

20 Vasárnapi Újság [Sunday Paper]. 20 November 1913, p. 394.

21 Vasárnapi Újság [Sunday Paper]. 20 November 1913, p. 394.

22 Ernő Kammerer, “A Szépművészeti Múzeum” [The Museum of Fine Arts]. In: Művészet, 1906, No. 3, p. 149.

23 The latter was placed on the wall between the Romanesque Hall and the Renaissance Hall. On a photo from after the Second World War, the part of the wall leading through the Golden Gate is open, leaving free passage between the two spaces. We do not know whether it was open before or it was broken through because of the war. The photo is in the files of the Old Sculpture Collection.

24 Ö. Gábor Pogány– Béla Bacher: A Szépművészeti Múzeum 1906–1956. Budapest, 1956, p. 33.

25 Imre Takács, Remekművek alteregói: Régi gipszöntvények. Kiállítási katalógus [Doubles of Masterpieces. Old Plaster Casts. Exhibition Catalogue]. Budapest, 1999, p. 1.

26 Ö. Gábor Pogány – Béla Bacher: A Szépművészeti Múzeum 1906–1956. Budapest, 1956, p. 33.

27 Aladár Bálint: “A Szépművészeti Múzeum gipszgyűjteménye” [The Cast Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts]. In: Nyugat, 1913, No. 16. http://epa.oszk.hu/00000/00022/nyugat.htm [last accessed 30 January 2015].

28 It is to be noted that the Renaissance Hall, the Michelangelo Room and the inner courts were also partly rearranged. See: A közép- és renaissance kori gipszgyűjtemény, kat. és rend. [The Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Plaster Copies. Exhibition Catalogue] by Zoltán Oroszlán, Elek Petrovics, Andor Piegler. Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 1926, pp. 1–3.

29 A közép- és renaissance kori gipszgyűjtemény, kat. és rend., by Zoltán Oroszlán, Elek Petrovics, Andor Piegler. Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 1926, 1–3.

30 A közép- és renaissance kori gipszgyűjtemény, kat. és rend. by Zoltán Oroszlán, Elek Petrovics, Andor Piegler. Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 1926.

31 Vasárnapi Újság [Sunday Paper]. 1920, No. 23, p. 1.

32 Tervezési feladat az Országos Magyar Szépművészeti Muzeum régi magyar gyűjteményéről és gipszmuzeumáról [Planning project for the old Hungarian collection and plaster cast museum of the Museum of Fine Arts]. Budapest, 1954. Forster Központ, Tervtár, No. 2073.

33 Tervezési feladat az Országos Magyar Szépművészeti Muzeum régi magyar gyűjteményéről és gipszmuzeumáról. Budapest, 1954. Forster Központ, Tervtár, No. 2073, p. 111.

34 A Szépművészeti Múzeum gipszmásolatgyűjteménye – közép- és reneszánszkori anyag. Felmérési dokumentáció [The plaster-cast replica collection of the Museum of Fine Arts – Medieval and Renaissance material. Documentation of the Survey]. 1993, II.