Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 13. (Budapest, 1993)

DÉTSHY Mihály: Sárospatak várának "aranyos kárpitjai"

MIHÁLY DETSHY THE FORMER "GOLDEN WALLHANGINGS" OF THE SÁROSPATAK CASTLE After the capture of Ferenc Rákóczi II and the confiscation of his lands on 18th April 1701, a list as well as an inventory of Sárospatak Castle was carried out on 28-29th July.

1 In the conscriptio - written in Hungarian - where the partly emptied or hardly furnished rooms are listed, our attention is caught by the expression "dining palace" with some pieces of furniture and "thirty-six golden hangings on the wall". This room was in the southern wing of the castle on the upper floor that had been built between 1643 and 1646 to the west from Zsuzsanna Lorántffy's bedroom equipped with a closed balcony lhat was decorated on its parapet with her name, coat of arms and the date 1643.

2 The day before the list a Latin inventory was prepared about the various properties of the castle - most of them secured in 12 chests. The enumeration of these objects was followed by "things outside the chests". Also a room is mentioned, "decorated with blue, woven tapestries of 36 parts". On the basis of the furniture listed here, this room must have been identical with the "dining palace" in the Hungarian inventory.

3 After the reconstruction between 1643 and 1646, the two documents mentioned above were the first and only complete list and inventory to show the castle in its original state, before the great fire in 1703. The subsequent, 1711-14 inventories describe the building as burnt down in its most parts, lacking furniture - thus the said tapestries are not mentioned again. After the death of Zsuzsanna Lorántffy in 1660 at Sárospatak, we have no data about significant reconstruction or refurnishing in the building. In the periods of repeated military occupations and government confiscations the original furniture and equipment diminished, thus, the inventory and list of 1701 reflected mainly the state from before 1660, in a poor condition. The tapestries mentioned above must have been put up after the end of the 1640 reconstruction work. We may get a picture about their purchase from the correspondence of György Rákóczi I, Prince of Transylvania and his wife, Zsuzsanna Lorántffy. Already in 1643, that is, right after the reconstruction of the earlier parts of the castle, they started furnishing the interior of the finished rooms. The prefect and governor of Rákóczi's estates in Hungary, Tamás Debrcczeni, who supervised the construction work, reported to his lord on April 13, 1643 that "the pictures, candlcholders and carpets that had been ordered by Mylord for these new houses can now be brought". These "new houses", however, were probably not in the neighbourhood of the dining room

4

, because on November 13 he again wrote to his lord that he had sent his men to Eperjes in the North-East of Hungary and to Cracow in Poland to buy the necessary