A unique relic is going under the hammer at a domestic auction: a copy of Endre Ady's death mask. Several people have immortalized the features of the famous poet.
Endre Ady took his last breath on the morning of January 27, 1919, at a quarter past eight, in the first Liget sanatorium II near Városliget. floor, also in room 30. He lay in his dead bed for twelve hours so that everyone could say goodbye to him.
Zsigmond Móricz was the first to arrive in the ward. He came to say goodbye and write.
He took paper and pencil next to Ady's dead body and wrote his obituary of Endre Ady on his deathbed, which was then published in the Ady memorial issue of the Nyugat magazine.
Then the others came in line. Csinszka, Ady's muse, Baron Lajos Hatvany, the poet's patron, who also covered the costs of sanatorium treatment, then Mihály Babits and many others. They stood in silent silence by the bed of the dead poet.
Then photographers, draftsmen and sculptors appeared to capture Ady's features.
According to reports from the time, several sculptors turned up at the bedside of the writer and poet, who died at the age of 41, to make a death mask.
Márk Vedres and Béni Ferenczy were also there at the Liget sanatorium. According to the recollections, Vedres applied grease to Ady's increasingly pale face with careful movements, smoothed his hair aside, and then placed the plaster model on it. It is also known that Vedre was asked by Baron Hatvany to make the death mask and it is also certain that the copies were later cast in Reichenberger's workshop. The famous sculptor and medal artist Beck Ö. Fílöp later stated that he also made a mask.
Years later, the sculptor Géza Csorba told the newspapers that she also took a plaster sample of Ady:
"I was his friend, perhaps the only one among the sculptors. I was with him even when he was waiting for death on the sanatorium bed. I mean, he just wasn't expecting it. He was afraid of death, he fought against it, he didn't want to believe that he was coming for him. He tried to push even his thought, even his assumption, away from him. During his illness, he did not allow painters or draftsmen to visit him except for me. He was a hypochondriac and he saw in draftsmen the harbingers of his impending death, who want to capture it for posterity."
It is certain that one of the original death masks went to Csinszka, and her husband, the painter Ödön Márffy, later donated it to the Hungarian National Museum.
This mask even showed some of the poet's hair stuck in the plaster.
This mask, on the other hand, is the II. He disappeared from the museum in the turmoil of World War II, during the siege.
It is not known how many copies of the death masks were made, but it is known that the Ady death mask, which will go under the hammer at the Honterus Antikvárium és Aukciósház auction on November 30, has already been auctioned once.
According to the card placed on the mask, it was put up for auction in November 1938 by the Hungarian Royal Savings Bank.
According to the experts, a good condition copy of the original death mask of Márk Vedres is the newly surfaced item. The starting price of the special relic is HUF 360,000.
Cover image: The death mask that stands out at auction has already gone under the hammer once in 1938.
Photo: Honterus Antiques and Auction House
