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Abstract

In the 14th century iconography of St Ladislaus there is an ensemble in which the sainted king is sitting on a throne. The earliest known relic of this maiestas type is bishop of Várad András Bátori's pontifical seal (1329–45). The high priest on confidential terms with King Charles Robert is credited with the renovation and enlargement of Várad (Oradea) cathedral including the erection of new altarpieces and the transformation of old ones. The first impression of his pontifical seal is dated 1338, which marks a turning point in the traditional composition of pontifical seals. They customarily featured the stationary figure of the archbishop or bishop, and later (from the beginning of the 14th century) the patron saint of the diocese with high priests at prayer around him or her. In the middle of the Bátori seal neither the bishop, nor the patron saint of the cathedral (Beata Maria Virgo), but King Saint Ladislaus can be seen (it was the king who had transferred the seat of the Bihar bishopric to Várad and founded the cathedral). Previously, St Ladislaus only featured on the seal of the Várad chapter from 1291. After its release the sedentary type spread quickly. Its extant specimens include a – by now perished – mural in the St Michael church of Kolozsvár, and the starting scenes in three fresco cycles on the legend of St Ladislaus in Transylvania (Gelence [Ghelinta], Homoródszentmárton [Martiniş], Homoródkarácsonyfalva [Craciunel]). The best known examples are the silver coins issued by King Louis I the Great from 1364. Highly distinguished among the relics is a mould for casting pigrim's badges fished out of the Seine in 1894. The casting mould gives us a clue as to what kind of a St Ladislaus altarpiece was venerated in Várad. This conclusion is justified by the fact that a pilgrim's badge always portrayed a votive icon or statue at the place of pilgrimage, with tiny copies of other saints specifically worshipped at the shrine. This applies to this casting mould as well, hence it features the schematic representation of the picture erected on St Ladislaus's renewed altar at the time of András Bátori – and this representation is identical with the picture of the bishop's seal. Concerning the Bátori seal, it was Jolán Balogh (1900–1986) who first hypothesized a Neapolitan link. On the basis of the quite obvious compositional correspondences, one can conclude that this link must have been Simone Martini's altarpiece of Saint Louis of Toulouse (1317) in Naples, which had a specially high ideological importance for the Anjous.

The enthroned St Ladislaus picture was undoubtedly a cultic image for the Hungarian Angevin kings, with ideological-typological roots in the Neapolitan court. The Hungarian branch of the family also adhered to the cults and iconographic traditions of Naples but they tried to adapt them to the circumstances of their new country with a view to superseding and modernizing the earlier models.

Abstract

The Premonstratensian monastery of Lelesz, dedicated to the Holy Cross, was founded by Boleszló, the bishop of Vác (1188–1212). Patronage, however, was given over to the king, and later rulers in turn handed patronage of the monastery to their subjects. In 1214, the act of foundation was reinforced and the church of Lelesz consecrated. With the king's support, Lelesz became one of the wealthiest monasteries and an important place of authentication (locus credibilis). The new church of the monastery was built around the middle of the 14th century; in 1362 magister Johannes from Buda was contracted to build the tower. The chapel of Saint Michael, standing to the north of the church, and originally probably also serving as the chapter house, was built under the prior Dominicus of the Pálóci family (1378–1403). Around 1400, this new chapel was fully decorated with wall paintings.

Much of the decoration – for example the frescoes of the vault – were destroyed when the chapel was re-vaulted in the 18th century. Still, a complete cycle of wall-paintings survives on the side walls of the chapel. On the south wall, there is a large, three-level image of the Last Judgment, with Christ in the mandorla dominating the scene, accompanied by the apostles on either side. In the lunettes of the north wall, two scenes can be detected: the one to the east depicts Saint Elisabeth of Hungary, while the other is possibly an image of Pope Urban V, in the company of cardinals. On the eastern walls of the chapel, apostles or prophets are depicted, framed by painted tracery.

The focus of the paper is the series of figures depicted on the two lower zones of the north wall. As can be determined with the help of fragmentary inscriptions, these figures represent the kings of Hungary, starting from King Saint Stephen. The inscription gives the names of rulers and the number of years they ruled. The cycle is fragmentary, so we do not know exactly how many kings were depicted, but there is enough space for all the Hungarian sovereigns up until the then-current ruler, Sigismund (1387–1437). Such a cycle is unique from the territory of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Best parallel is provided by the cycle of initials in the Illuminated Chronicle (c. 1360, Széchényi National Library, Cod. Lat. 404), which also depict the pagan rulers of Hungarian prehistory, giving a complete genealogical cycle. Models of this cycle – just like that of the contemporary Luxemburg genealogy once on the walls of Karlstein castle in Bohemia – were provided by French manuscripts, especially the Grandes Chroniques de France. Emphasis in the cycle is not on individual kings, but on the unity and continuity of the line of Hungarian kings. One figure stands out: the first (badly damaged) ruler of the cycle is depicted enthroned. It is here proposed that the cycle starts with an image of the current ruler, King Sigismund. The style and iconography of the cycle make it a prime example of the International Gothic style, and these characteristic can be explained by the close connections of Lelesz abbey to the royal court.

Abstract

Sárvár castle was the property of the Nádasdy family from the early 16th century until 1670. Its current pentagonal shape was formed during the time of judge royal Ferenc III Nádasdy, one of the leading art patrons of the 17th century. Its early 17th century state is documented by three inventories (1630, 1646, 1650), and the layout of the interior, the functions and furnishings of the rooms can be reconstructed from the inventory dated 1669. The paper suggests some new dates of construction, explicates the stucco and fresco ornamentation program and on the basis of the furnishing inquiries into the role and function of the castle turned residence during Ferenc Nádasdy's time.

Comparing the inventories of various dates, one finds that Nádasdy first had wing A reconstructed before 1646. Research puts to the mid-17th century the rest of the constructions: building of the C wing and chapel, linkage of gate tower and wing A. Archival sources put the reconstruction to 1650–51. The stateroom was created at that time on the ceiling of which Hans Rudolf Miller painted in 1653 a fresco series of town sieges during the 15-year war. The stuccowork by Andrea Bertinalli framing the frescoes is dated by the paper also to 1653, a different date from what research earlier suggested. The conception of the ceiling decoration was completed before Nádasdy left in early June 1653 for the coronation of Ferdinand IV in Regensburg. Thus the iconography of the frescoes is independent of the thematically similar battle-scene cycle (possibly in oil) seen on the way in Günzburg near Ulm, about which Pál Esterházy travelling with Nádasdy wrote in his diary. Nádasdy had the opportunity to see in Günzburg the now extinct 16 full-length portraits ordered by the previous owner of the castle Karl von Burgau upon the model of the Spanischer Saal in Ambras around 1600. That may have inspired him to have the 20 full-length portraits painted mentioned by the inventory of 1669 in one of the salons of Sárvár.

Contemporaneous with the reconstruction is the staircase beneath the tower, mentioned in an order to stucco artist Andrea Bartinalli in February 1657 in which Nádasdy ordered the plasterwork for the ceiling of the upstairs rooms of wings E and D and the corridor of wing E, as well as a dual coat of arms above the mantelpiece in a room in the E wing. The order reveals that the stucco of three rooms in wing D had been started and Bertinalli was to finish it. Payment reveals that Bertinalli had completed the bulk of the work by the end of 1657. It probably included the ceiling stucco of the corner room in wing D, the only one still extant today. The plaster decoration frames frescoes the themes of which are from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ingeborg Schemper-Sparholz traced their engraved prototypes to Antonio Tempesta, but this could only be verified for the Narcissus scene. The Perseus and Andromeda story adopts Chrispijn de Passe's work via a mediating print, the models for the rest of the scenes are unknown. The joint interpretation of the fresco themes and the so-far unstudied iconography of the plasterwork could provide the key to the program of the entire ceiling. The stucco putti hold attributes of natural plenitude, fertility, while the Ovid scenes are about accepted love (Perseus and Andromeda, Jupiter and Callisto) or the rejection of love (Narcissus, Venus sends Amor to kindle desire in Pluto for Proserpina who rejects love). The ceiling decoration is the apology of love and female fertility in the corner room that was one of the rooms of the female suite after the mid-century reconstruction of the castle.

Practically nothing is known of the one-time art works in the castle. The inventories reflect numeric data, which reveal that by increasing the number of art works Nádasdy wished to create a representative image in the Sárvár rooms after the rebuilding. The definite functions and furnishing of the different wings are revealed by the May 1669 inventory taken a few months after the death of the count's wife Anna Júlia Esterházy. It shows therefore the state of the interior as it had evolved during one and a half decades' use after the reconstruction. The composition of the furnishing reveals that the described rooms did not serve for actual residence. Apart from the monotony and impersonal character of the description of the furniture the most conspicuous things are the absent objects, particularly in comparison with the description of the actual residence of the family, the castle of Pottendorf. This comparison reveals that in Sárvár pieces of storing furniture, first of all those for keeping clothes and textiles, are missing in Sárvár. There are only two cupboards but they are empty. There is no furniture to hold books, while in Pottendorf there was a Bibliotheca. In Sárvár, except for Nádasdy's bedroom and one of the women's rooms, the beds are not installed, and apart from Nádasdy's suite there are no curtains, draperies, and there is no mirror.

The inventory confirms the earlier research findings: Sárvár did not function as a residence, since before 1650 the family lived in Deutschkreuz, then in Seibersdorf in Lower Austria and from 1660 in Pottendorf. There are not many data about Nádasdy's stay in Sárvár in his itinerary either, which throws new light on the representative modernization of the castle and the need to create a new residence. Concerning functions, it is illumining to compare Sárvár with Deutschkreuz where the family is documented to have spent lengthier periods regularly in the second half of the 1650s with frequent guests. That is probably why around 1657 a two-level “Saalgebäude” of several rooms was built in Deutschkreuz. It must also be attributable to function that the Sárvár castle was representatively impersonal, “Prunkappartement”-like. There are few data to suggest what role the castle was assigned in the 1650s, but they tend to reveal that after the reconstruction and furnishing with art works Sárvár was to be the venue of ceremonial hospitality as the occasional protocol venue of Nádasdy's official matters in Hungary.

Abstract

The series of copper engravings representing Hungarian noblemen (Icones illustrium heroum Hungariae), which was prepared by Elias Wideman, appeared in 1652 at Vienna as the last piece of a three-part series containing a hundred portraits each. This unit of a hundred portraits, which offered a cross-sectional view of 17th-century Hungarian noble society, exerted a strong influence upon the further development of the portrait in Hungary. The three volumes were sponsored by field marshall count Johann Christoph Puchheim, whose decision probably underlay the fact that whereas the first two volumes (Vienna, 1646 and 1649) published, with only 18 exceptions, the portraits of Austrian or imperial aristocrats, the third one contained exclusively those of noblemen from the territories subjected to the Crown of Saint Stephen. This latter, “Hungarian” volume differed from the two previous ones not only with regard to the persons portraited, but also in that the full-page family coat-of-arms of Puchheim gave place to the copper engraved picture of the Hungarian Crown there.

The Wideman literature has so far regarded the volume's representation of the Crown as the exact copy of the copper engraving which was prepared by Wolfgang Kilian in 1613 at Augsburgban for the book of Péter Révay on the Holy Crown. Yet a thorough examination of the two engravings has yielded a different result: it is not a copy which was published in the volume of Wideman in 1652 but the Kilian engraving itself pressed from the original plate. The reuse of the copper plate has hitherto escaped the attention basically for two reasons. Firstly, the representation of the Crown at Wideman is already closer to reality, reproducing correctly the number of its hangers; secondly, the engraving which appeared in 1652 is not signed. The two things are probably related: it may have been a consequence of the alteration made in the representation of the Crown that the name of Révay, the inventor, and that of Kilian, the engraver, were removed in the course of the reworking. Yet the identity of the copper plate is still proved by the visible remnants of the removed details on the Crown's representation in the Wideman volume.

Consequently, the question emerges of how and where was the copper plate, prepared by Wolfgang Kilian at Augsburg forty years before, found, and by whom and why was it transferred to Wideman to Vienna to be published in the Icones? The plate, which returned to the author, Péter Révay in 1613, was consequently inherited by his grandson, judge royal Ferenc Nádasdy, who cared for the intellectual heritage of his grandfather. When the goods of the judge royal, who was tried and executed for high treason in 1671, were listed at Pottendorf, two plates representing the Hungarian Crown were inventoried, one of them with the abbreviated name of Augsburg attached. This was probably the plate prepared by Kilian in 1613, whereas the other apparently the one made for the Crown' representation in the second edition of the book which was published at the expenses of Nádasdy in 1652.

All that could so far be found out on the relationship between Ferenc Nádasdy and the portrait series published by Wideman is that the Hungarian-related representations of the two volumes (1646, 1652) were at least partially engraved by Wideman on the basis of the portrait gallery of Nádasdy which represented his contemporaries. Yet the reuse of the original Kilian plate, which can be proved to have been owned by Nádasdy, raises the further possibility that the hitherto unknown initiator and intellectual director of the third, exclusively Hungarian volume may have been (perhaps together with others) Ferenc Nádasdy himself, a hypothesis that is underpinned by the recently reconstructed relationship between Nádasdy and Puchheim. It was probably Nádasdy who ordered Wideman to modify the copper plate borrowed for the volume, and to alter the engraving of the Crown according to exact information. The source of the correction of the representation may have been Nádasdy himself, who participated to the coronation of Ferdinand IV as Master of the Hungarian Royal Court in 1647, and was thus offered the possibility of a thorough examination of the otherwise invisible Crown and could consequently give a detailed description of it to Wideman.

It was not by pure chance that the volume containing the portraits of 100 Hungarians was headed by the engraving from the book of Révay on the Holy Crown, for the latter's conceptofthecrownfocussed precisely upon the idea of the “nation of estates”. The same concept was expressed by the iconography of Wideman's Icones by collecting the representatives of the nation of estates behind Révay's representation of the Crown. The volume of portraits can thus be regarded as an example of the intensification of the national identity of the estates in the 17th century.

The work of Wideman which was published in 1652 influenced the consequent development of portrait painting in the 17th century in several regards. Painted noble portrait galleries were made in series by the adoption of the so-called Wideman type, and later even a demand emerged to supplement the painted versions with the portraits of further persons. The two most renowned series of small-scale oil paintings (one of them with 136 portraits) belonged to the Csáky family, and were in all probability prepared in the last quarter of the 17th century upon the order of judge royal István Csáky, renowned for his literary activities.

The importance and initial influence of the Wideman engravings mainly manifested itself in the transformation which took place in the iconography of the Hungarian noble portraits. The change of identity which resulted in the disappearance from the middle of the 17th century of Western European wear from the Hungarian female portraits, and in the representation of aristocratic women in Hungarian costume, is to be accounted for by the appearance of the Icones and the emergence of a united “nation of estates”. The reason was surely not a change of fashion, but the intention of representing themselves on the portraits as members of the Hungarian noble society, which, as a phenomenon, is most conspicuous in the representations of the female members of families loyal to the Habsburg court. The exclusiveness of Hungarian wear on the female portraits will wane together with the 17th century and with Ottoman rule in Hungary, and so will several other elements of traditional courtly culture.

The next phase in the transformation of the representation of the Hungarian aristocracy was connected to the Mausoleum, a series of representations of Hunno-Hungarian leaders and Hungarian kings, which was published in 1664 at Nuremberg, and sponsored by Nádasdy. On the basis of some characteristic examples it can safely be stated that the serial production of noble ancestral portrait galleries began in the decade following the appearance of the Mausoleum engravings, and was conspicuously accompanied by an effort to root the past of the individual families through these portrait galleries in the very beginnings of Hungarian history. It was then that the portrait series began to be completed with the representations of ancestors beyond one generation, for which the composition of the Mausoleum engravings was frequently put to use.

Since it is from the portrait series of the most important aristocratic families that the earliest adaptations of the Mausoleum engravings are known, the logical question arises of whether Ferenc Nádasdy himself ordered family portraits to be made on the model of the Mausoleum. The answer is no. Yet he turned with conspicuous attention towards portrait painting, his library catalogue containing six different volumes of engraved portraits, an outstanding number in this period. Likewise unique was his drive to create a portrait gallery by having his contemporaries eternalised in painting, thus establishing the virtual Hungarian royal court with the portraits of all the persons who held one of the chief offices in the period between 1645 and 1655. The beginning of his gallery of contemporaries was not unrelated to the ascending course of his public and political career, which began with his appointment as Master of the Hungarian Royal Court and his parallel accession to the chief office-holders (1646). His appointment as secret court councillor (1662) and royal lieutenant (1667), on the other hand, prompted him to give expression to his ever closer attachment to the imperial aristocracy in terms of portrait representation. Accordingly, Nádasdy, as he rose higher in the court hierarchy, and aimed at a closer integration into the Vienna elite, imitated the lifestyle of the court aristocracy and adopted their forms of representation. It was thus only natural that the artistic setting of his castle at Pottendorf in Lower Austria was characterised by the elements of imperial representation. Before all, by those series of imperial portraits of which three are listed by the castle inventory. Among the two series comntaining the portraits of Habsburg rulers, one was modelled upon the engravings of Francesco Terzio (Imagines Gentis Austriae), whereas the third was an adaptation of the popular series which followed Tizian's portraits of the Roman emperors or, to be correct, the engravings which Aegidius Sadeler made of them. The occasions which emphasised the social position of the judge royal, and offered the possibility of a close connection with the court, likewise prove that Nádasdy pursued a “two-way” personal representation, staging himself simultaneously as a member of two elites: an aristocrat of the Habsburg court and a leading office-holder of the Hungarian Kingdom. This accounts for the fact that he did not surround himself with representations of his family past embedded in national history. The message of his portrait representation spoke about himself, and reflected his real or desired status within his own social circle.