BLOCK, Benjamin

(b. 1631 Lübeck, d. 1690 Regensburg)

German painter, his father and brothers were also painters. In 1655 he set off on a study tour to Italy, Through his brother, a canon in Vienna, he met Ferenc Nádasdy who invited him to Hungary. Of his paintings made there, the portraits of Nádasdy and his wife as well as that of Pál Esterházy have survived.

At Loretto and Gyõr he painted altarpieces. Armed with a letter of reference from Nádasdy, he travelled to Italy in 1659 and was commissioned to paint the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher who later served as intermediary in a deal resulting in an order for a portrait of Pope Alexander VII. After working as a portrait painter in Siena, Florence and Venice, in 1664 he returned to Germany where he married and lived in Nuremberg with his wife, the painter Anna Catharina Fischer, until 1670. He made portraits for the margraves of Ansbach and the Vienna court.

Portrait of Count Ferenc Nádasdy

The painting is signed on the bottom at right. Later it was transferred to a new canvas.

Count Ferenc N�dasdy was born at in 1622. He studied law at Siena and later took two more trips to Italy. A Lutheran by birth, in 1643 he converted to Catholicism and the following year married Anna Julianna, daughter of Mikl�s Esterh�zy. He and his brother-in-law P�l Esterh�zy attended Ferdinand IV’s coronation as King of Rome in Frankfurt in 1653, and then travelled around Germany. In 1655 he became Seneschal, the second highest ranking dignitary in Hungary. N�dasdy was the richest art collector and most versatile art patron in 17th-century Hungary. He had the ceiling of the grand hall in his castle at S�rv�r decorated with scenes of the 15-year war against the Turks. Come of his portraits depict him as a sponsor of the church; others relate to his parliamentary work. At the close of his life he participated in the abortive Wessel�nyi revolt against Habsburg absolutism, for which he was beheaded at the Vienna town hall. His property was confiscated.

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Portrait of Princess Anna Julianna Eszterházy, Wife of Count Ferenc Nádasdy

The painting is signed on the bottom at right. Later it was transferred to a new canvas.

This is the companion-piece of the portrait of Count N�dasdy. It came into the collection of the Hungarian National Museum together with the other painting.

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