Hungary launches procedure to list Munkacsy masterpiece

Budapest (MTI) – The cabinet office has initiated a procedure to prevent Mihaly Munkacsy’s monumental painting “Golgotha” from being permanently removed from the country.

“With the listing procedure, the government wants to keep this extraordinary work of our national painting in the Hungarian sphere of interest,” the national office in charge of oversight of cultural heritage said on Tuesday. “Naturally, the procedure will not prevent the owner of the painting from selling it, as its listing has no such purpose.”

The painting will be listed temporarily until rules on a permanent listing are applied, it added.

The owner, the Hungarian-born American collector Imre Pakh, said on Sunday that he would have “Golgotha” removed from the Deri Museum in Debrecen because talks on the possible sale of the work to the state have fallen through.

The painting is one of eminent 19th-century painter Munkacsy’s famous “Christ Trilogy” and is currently on loan to the Deri Museum, where all three paintings are on display.