MARKÓ, Károly the Elder

Markó was one of the greatest Hungarian landscapists of the first half of the 19th century. He studied at the Academy in Vienna after 1822. Around 1830 he painted several landscapes depicting the Hungarian regions in Neoclassicist style: Visegrád is the most famous among them. With the help of the banker Geymüller he travelled to Italy in 1832; he spent the rest of his life there. He worked in Rome, Pisa, and Florence. After moving to Italy he worked in the style of the so-called heroic landscape painting. He depicted idealized landscapes with mythological or folkloric figures. Fishermen and The Tivoli Region are the most typical examples of this style. The Puszta (Great Hungarian Plain) is a memento of his visit to Hungary in 1853; this painting reveals the influence of RomanticismGLOSSARYA term loosely applied to literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Resulting in part from the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, the romantic movements had in common only a revolt against the prescribed rules of classicism. The basic aims of romanticism were various: a return to nature and to belief in the goodness of humanity; the rediscovery of the artist as a supremely individual creator; the development of nationalistic pride; and the exaltation of the senses and emotions over reason and intellect. In addition, romanticism was a philosophical revolt against rationalism..