EN
The panorama The Entry o f the Conquering Magyars was painted in 1892-1894 by Arpad Feszty and assistants for an exhibition commemorating millenium celebrations. The panorama consists of a full integration of the painting with the three-dimensional foreground. The oil painting on linen canvas was 15 m. high and 113 m. long and its surface areawas more than 1600 sq. m. The canvas was stretched between two circular beams to form a hyperboloid shape. The foreground (artifical terrain) was produced and fused together with the painting by using different materials, and the illusion of infinite space was formed by avoiding visible connections. The Budapest rotunda was destroyed during the bombardment in 1944. Fortunately almost 80% of the figurai part and a few sections of the sky survived, a total of 614 sq. m. (approx. 30% of the entire painting). The artifical terrain was completely destroyed. Between 1991-1995 a group of twenty Polish specialists carried out a total conservation and reconstruction of the Feszty Panorama. Forty-six fragments of the surviving painting were conserved, and additional layers and non-original repainting removed. In the new rotunda building at Opusztaszer, the restorers built form fresh canvas a new hyperboloid form with exactly the same dimensions as the Feszty original. Similarly to a highly specializal form of skin surgury, they cut out sections of fresh canvas and replaced it by grafting the original fragments into exactly the right position. Subsequently, the entire rear of the painting was reinforced with glass fibre fabric. Archive photographs aided the perfect reconstruction of the missing parts. The task in question has no precedence in the history of world conservation.