Károly Markó’s painting of Visegrád is the first representative work of autonomous Hungarian landscape painting in the 19th century. The work depicts one of the much celebrated, legendary landmarks in Hungarian history, the castle complex of Visegrád. By the 19th century, only ruins remained of the splendid medieval buildings, thus encompassing both the triumphs and the storms of Hungarian history. As the perspective is relatively close to the ground, the viewer is drawn into the composition. Occupying the lower third of the painting is the massive, and more intact, tower of Solomon, the Danube and the mountains across the river. The organization of the elements reflect a unique value system, in which the ruins lie above all that is intact, placing the historical monuments in a position of superiority over the formations of nature. Károly Markó’s painting is the first Hungarian composition to use landscape painting to express a concept of nationhood, thereby creating an emblem of the Hungarian national landscape which to this day proves powerful and moving.
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