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Hungary purchases Mihály Munkácsy’s Golgotha

The government paid Hungarian-born American art collector Imre Pakh 3 billion HUF (9.3m HUF) for the painting

The Hungarian government has purchased 19th-century painter Mihály Munkácsy’s signature piece, Golgotha.

Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, said the government paid Hungarian-born American art collector Imre Pakh 3 billion HUF (9.3m HUF) for the painting.

Gulyás highlighted that the purchase means that all three pieces of Munkácsy’s famous “Christ Trilogy” are now owned by the Hungarian state.

The state had owned Ecce Homo! (1896), the third painting in the trilogy, for years and acquired Christ Before Pilate (1881), another of the three, from Canada’s Art Gallery of Hamilton for 5.7 million USD in 2015, with funding from the National Bank of Hungary’s program to buy national art treasures.