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While Ferenczy wanted to create Hungarian sculpture by following the forms and aesthetic ideas of international Classicism, the exponents of the next generation, among them Károly Alexy, followed the ideas of the more nationalistic German Romanticism. He studied under Josef Klieber in Vienna. Since he relied mainly on Austrian and German commissions, he produced a 16 piece series consisting of small portraits of 17th-century German military commanders. The portraits of Daun, Starhemberg and Eugen von Savoy are the more widely known among these.
In the bronze sculpture of King Matthias, made in 1844, he mixed the style of the Vienna Academy with elements of Erns Rietschel's art. Mátyás, or the Hunyadis in general, was a frequently used symbol of national identity during the Reform Age in the 19th century; they would have occupied the main positions in an imaginary sculpture park of the nation. Several sculptors of the period - István Ferenczy, Károly Alexy, László Dunaiszky, Rudolf Züllich and Marco Casagrande - created or planned to create a statue or a memorial of King Matthias.
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