Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 32/2. (2012)
Articles
CLOAK JEWELS ON TRANSYLVANIAN AND HUNGARIAN MURAL PAINTINGS OF THE ANGEVIN PERIOD kármen Anita BARÁTH MA, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, HU From the Angevin period there are only a few mural paintings on which the painter depicted costume accessories, still these murals prove to be significant support for archaeological researches. Some of the discussed paintings are particularly detailed and talkative on fashion. The illustrated saints in Vizsoly or the recently found wall painting of the parish church in Pest provide important additional information for the interpretation of certain jewels or dress accessories. Costume accessories are rarely painted dress elements not only in the fourteenth but also in the fifteenth century, albeit when they actually appear, they usually have a special meaning, they bear social, ethnic or sometimes moral connotations. In some cases the testimony of murals and the testimony of archaeological results do not correspond with each other. Some accessories which archaeologists interpret as social or ethnic indicators can appear in different context or bear different meaning in mural paintings. By my comparative research I aim to explore these differences and accordance; while I make an attempt to evaluate murals as archaeological sources. Keywords: Middle Ages, Angevin Period, medieval mural painting, costume history, cloak jewel The cloak jewels are undoubtedly the most popular and diversely depicted artefacts amongst the cloth accessories reproduced on mural paintings of the Angevin and Sigismund Period. The term cloak jewel’ covers several types of accessories. Defined by their decorative, holding or covering function on the costume of the upper body, five types of clothes accessories can be separated based on the archaeological materials: embossed ornamental plates, buttons, beads, small curved bronze wires used as buckles and pinned buckles. Since they can be easily mixed up with belt buckles, the latter are defined by their position in the graves or in the case of spare or treasure finds by their relatively large size. On mural paintings amongst these types the embossings, the terminals and the dress buckles can be observed. While in graves the decorating embossings found around the chest cannot be defined exclusively as cloak accessories, on wall paintings they appear solely as cloak jewels or as the accessories of the wide cape that covers the robe. Even though there are only a few notable murals from the Angevin Period, they are easy to compare with the archaeological material. In the present a total of seven mural paintings with representation of cloak jewels are known: from Porumbenii Mari in Transylvania, from the Parish Church of Pest and from the churches in Keszthely, Laskod, Lónya, Velemér and Vizsoly in Hungary (Fig. 1). MARISIA XXXII, p. 205-213
