Sejtés és kétely. Kónyi Hugó kárpitja az Iparművészeti Múzeum gyűjteményében?

A tapestry transferred by the National Centre for Monuments and Museums (MMOK) to the Museum of Applied Arts was inventoried in the museum collection in 1952. It shows a central female figure and a few more female figures behind under a columnal hall. Emőke László’s research has revealed that it is a 17th century re-weaving of a Renaissance tapestry (she was the head of the Textile Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest). The original series of tapestries depicting the story of Psyché was woven in Brussels for King Francis I of France. Our tapestry is a detail of one of the pieces in the series. The provenance of this piece is a source of both conjecture and doubt. Both in his manuscript on his Hungarian fellow collectors and in a letter written on 22 January 1949, Antal Géber (art collector) mentioned that Hugó Kónyi, a banker, owned a tapestry depicting the story of Psyché, which, according to the laconic description, could be identified with the piece in the inventory. In 1949, the State Protection Authority (secret police) had it removed from the last Hungarian residence of Hugó Kónyi and his wife, the first-floor apartment at 3 Vigadó Square in Budapest, in two lorries, together with other excellent works of art, after the couple had left the country with valid passports in 1947 and Miklós Halmi, who was living in the apartment, had defected. (The Kónyis settled in Lausanne and died there.) No other documents, inventories or photographs are known to date that would provide a more detailed description of this tapestry or of their artworks in general. In the 1920s and 1930s, Hugó Kónyi housed his collection in the villa at 36 Szemlőhegy Street, in Budapest’s Rózsadomb neighbourhood. His main treasures were his sculptures and Flemish paintings, along with a wide variety of decorative arts: Renaissance and Baroque furniture, silverware, carpets, tapestries and faience. Kónyi hardly lent artworks for exhibitions. The main items of the collection are only known from the list of losses after the Second World War, with rather brief designations, which Antal Géber compiled from memory as an annex to the above-mentioned letter. Of course, the identification of the tapestry cannot be proven 100% based on this. A few of Kónyi’s works of art are in public collections. Among them, the so-called Madonna of Cserény (Čerín, Slovakia) stands out, as well as the painting previously attributed to Abraham Janssens the Elder (Diana reveals Callisto’s pregnancy). Perhaps this tapestry fits into that line, with – hopefully – some more works of art about which we don’t know (yet).