M A K Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Hermeneutic Spiral: Interpreting Alajos Unger’s late Nazarene painting Baptism of Vajk (1842)
- Michael O’Toole’s functional semiotic model based on Hallidayan linguistics is applied to a hermeneutic analysis of 19th century art of the Austrian Empire. The obscure painter Alajos Unger (1814-1848) from Győr, Hungary, was the son of playing-card maker Mátyás Unger the Elder (1789–1862) and a designer of award-winning playing cards during Vormärz (the Reform Era in Hungary). He trained at the Vienna Art Academy, and two of his paintings (The recapture of Győr 1598, 1840; Family portrait, 1843) are in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery. His Baptism of Vajk (1842) is the only such Nazarene history painting known in Hungarian art. Nazarene art, recently reappraised as modern, conceptual art, influenced the British Pre-Raphaelites and thus modern Hungarian art. Due to its symbolic nature, it is ideal for functional semiotic interpretation. Such an analysis of Unger’s Baptism of Vajk identifies its patriotic, yet conservative, Catholic pro-Habsburg stance promoting dynastic piety (Pietas Hungarica) and a supra-national, cosmopolitan stance opposed to nationalist rhetoric as part of a cycle of paintings created by the artist.