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Shortly after the withdrawal of the Turks the reconstruction of the parish church of Buda Castle was begun, and in the course of the eighteenth century the noble families, military leaders and members of the middle-classes made significant donations for the baroque furnishings and the setting up of side-altars. As yet it is only the high altar about which we have verifiable information: this huge structure was mounted in 1758 and Caspar Franz Sambach of Vienna was commissioned to make the altarpiece representing the Assumption of the Virgin. The red copper tabernacle was the work of the Pozsony master locksmith, Antal Tober; the gilded wooden statues which once flanked the altar, namely thé kneeling figures of St. Aloysius and St. Stanislaus, are now in the Hungarian National Gallery. The baroque interior is known to us only from a few surviving drawings, since no photographs were taken prior to the reconstruction directed by Schulek. Thus the small hovering angel now in the Gallery can only be identified conditionally as the figure decorating the pulpit depicted in a nineteenth century drawing. The baroque pulpit had already been donated elsewhere by Countess Zichy in 1769. She commissioned the sculptural decoration which was executed by her marshal and resident sculptor, Károly Bebo. The Putto in the Gallery shows many similarities with the chubby child figures characteristic of Bebo's work; thus there is little evidence-apart from the exceptional size of the statue-with which to dispute the fact that the statue was intended for the altar. The soft, roundish forms of the white and gold wooden statue are reminiscent of hand-moulded gypsum stucco work: though massive, the figure appears to hover effortlessly.
Bebo was an extremely prolific sculptor, active in Buda in the second half of the century. Most of his works, including the high altar of St. Anne's Church, the banisters in the Zichy residence in Óbuda and the pulpit of the former Cistercian church in Székesfehérvár, can still be seen in their original setting and bear witness to the genius for decoration with which the Master and members of his workshop were endowed.
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