ZICHY, Mihály

The picture depicts the ball in honour of Alexander II arranged in Helsingfors in September 1863 on the premises of the railway station.

The coronation of Alexander II took place on 26 August 1856 in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.

Mih�ly Zichy painted his monumental work. The Triumph of the Genius of Destruction for the Paris World Fair of 1878. “Demon” was a study drawn for the central figure, but in its arrangement and romantic rendering, it is more than a mere sketch. In this drawing, Zichy depicted his own version of a demon - a being full of contradictions. In the Academically conceived, idealized body of this beautiful and young male, the artist captured an evil spirit endangering both universal and personal happiness. Elevated to a monumental scale, the figure of the demon is a late descendant of the Antique god Mars, and, at the same time, the forerunner of the approaching fin-de-si�cle’s demons of death. With its imposing and dynamic composition, this study stands out of the innumerable aquarelles, ink drawings, and detailed illustrations by Zichy.

Mih�ly Zichy was 19 years old when he painted the picture. Zichy, a pupil of Waldm�ller in Vienna, went on with his career in Pest the same year. Although his master, a realist of character portrayal, had taught Zichy the same ideas, the picture was by no manner of menas similar to the popular and amusing style of Austrian genre painting. The picture can be linked to G�ricault and Delacroix who initiated French romanticism. By moving the figures right into the foreground, Zichy gave a psychologic analysis of his defenceless figures. Typical figures of Vienna biedermeier appear in the picture: small children playfully stretching out for the crucifix, old women praying, old men with beard and models of the art academy. What makes the picture even more surprising is young Zichy’s skills of dramatic portrayal of the scene.

Th�ophile Gautier, the French apostle of romanticism, called young Zichy “monstre de g�nie” because he increased tensions to the utmost in his pictures. With his “Life Boat” the young artist rebelled against coolly sophisticated academism and won the prize of the Academy in spite of its old professors.

Although the Hungarian artist Mih�ly Zichy became the painter at the court of Saint Petersburg and would serve four tsars until his death in 1906, his art finds its roots and correspondences in Western Europe, his artistic approach being close to liberal thought and the end of Romanticism.