Main square of Cluj in 1870

Sárdi István is the author of one of the emblematic paintings rendering the main square of the city of Cluj during the nineteenth century. One of these works depicts several houses on the northern side of the square, typically Renaissance in their structure, portals and window openings, with outreaching wooden attics. The era's atmosphere is suggested by the depiction of a fast-moving chalet, the painted commercials on the facades and the women in nineteenth century costumes gathered by the public water well.

The postcard is available at the History of Pharmacy Collection and at the National History Museum on Transylvania in Cluj.

Postcard reproducing almost all of the painting, edited by the National history Museum of Transylvania

Black and white reproduction of the entire painting.

Murádin Jenő has attempted to reconstruct the painters life and career. He states that "Sárdi was born into a famous Unitarian family from Torockó (Rimetea). He first learned from György Vastagh (1834–1922), a painter who studied in Vienna, then he went to the Kunstschule of Nurenberg with a scholarship offered by Gusztáv Keleti (1834–1902), the founder of the Drawing School. Sárdi met the well-known Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy (1844–1900), who even offered him his own studio. When Sárdi returned home, he taught drawing in the State Training School of Kolozsvár, but his last decade was marked by the disease of tabes dorsalis (syphilitic myelopathy). Unfortunately many of his paintings have been lost or destroyed." 

See more on the painter in Hungarian HERE.