Takács Imre: Az Árpád-házi királyok pecsétjei (Corpus sigillorum hungariae mediaevalis 1. Budapest, 2012)

Image and Style

New elements are miniature shields placed between the lion figures along the central axis of the shield, and a further novelty is the symmetric arrangement of the animal figures turned towards the shields.

Judging from its stylistic features, the portraits of the king on the second great seal and gold seal are among the earliest certainly-dated Central European instances of Gothic figurái art. Strangely, the figure proportions and drapery on these first-rate pieces of goldsmith work lie much closer to French Gothic monumental sculpture from the first decades of the thirteenth than the twelfth- century-rooted conventional king-representations of its French contemporaries, the seals of Philippe Auguste (figure 29).349 For a figure with similar proportions and a tunic and cloak of similar stylisation and arrangement, and for the sources of the seal’s unusual iconographic features, we must search among contemporary royal seals from the most distant lands of Europe. The maicstas representation of Iking John Lackland of England (1199-1216) on his great seal, with its sweeping proportions and dry, elegant figure style (fig. 43),350 bears the closest resemblance to the new seals used by Andrew II after 1213.

The style of the Hungarian royal seals of the 1210s seems to draw on the classical art which became widespread around 1200. Hungary is well known to have maintained constant and fruitful links with the repositories of the classical heritage, Italy and Byzantium, but Western centres of the twelfth-century renaissance also bore a crucial influence on its court art. We should mention here Ernő Marosi’s stylistic analysis of the art of marble sculptors working on the decoration and furnishing of Esztergom Cathedral, linking it with north-west European art works such as the representations of the months on the floor tiles of St Bettin, the work ofNicolaus von Verdun, and illuminated codices of around 1200.351 To this might be added the inventive vaulting design and much of the splendid decorative sculpture in the late twelfth-century chapel of the royal palace of Esztergom, the work of artists from the Ile-de-France,352 and the intensive Gothic- inspired construction activity of the Cistercian Order in the same years, best known from the church and cloister of Pilis Abbey.353 Continuity ofWestern artistic influence was assured by the unique network of the Cistercian order and the dynastic links of the royal court. The latter were refreshed in 1215 when Andrew II married Yolande, daughter of Peter, Latin Emperor of Constantinople, a member of the Courtenay branch of

349 Dallas 1991, p. 151, no. 71.

350 English Romanesque Art, p. 305, Nr. 335.

331 Marosi 1971, pp. 202-210.

352 On the French precursors of Esztergom Chapel: Marosi 1984, pp. 67-69; Sauerländer 1990, p. 394.

353 A review of the art-historical significance of Pilis: Takács 2007.

the Capet dynasty.354 It was the second close link forged between the French and Hungarian royal houses within thirty years, not counting Béla Ill’s connection with the Chátillon family through his first marriage. The resulting court environment provides all the explanation we need for the high artistic standards and modern, Gothic style of the Hungarian royal seals.

Key to the birth of this style was the studio of sculptors who started work on the new Cathedral of Chartres in 1194. Their cycle of statues on the two transept facades, probably dating from shortly after 1200, generated a style which found direct disciples among the sculptors working on first construction campaign of Reims Cathedral in the second decade of the century.355 This mode of expression, known as Muldenfaltenstil, assumes a knowledge of classical sculpture. Its most striking features are drapery folds running in deep parallel troughs with drop-shaped endings which both in antiquity and the Middle Ages were subordinated to a kind of naturalist conception of representation of the body. The soft lines of the clothing, conveying thin material, takes up a taut, smooth form on protrusions, and fall into a mass of dense, shadowed folds at the depressions. It is a style particularly suited to expressing the arrangement and movements of parts of the body, the posture, and the contrapposto pose. Besides featuring drapery with a sculptural value of its own, the style captures the structure and movement of the body, and gives an intelligent representation of the subject. At the same time, as Paul Williamson has pointed out,356 it is surprising that a style so closely associated with Gothic sculpture was introduced not in the great building studios but on small, two-dimensional art works. The model that-perhaps with the mediation of Byzantine art-revived the drapery modelling of classical sculpture357 and was soon being reflected in painting and large sculpture was the art ofNicolaus von Verdun, specifically the Klosterneuburg ambo finished in 1181 and the Cologne shrine of Three Kings.358 Roman sculpture almost certainly had a direct influence on the artists of the early thirteenth century: the figures of the Visitatdo in Reims could hardly be explained without the Ara pads.359 Nonetheless, there can be no doubting the key role of

354 On the art-historical significance of the Courtenay connection: Takács 2006.

355 On the connections between Chartres and the prophet cycle occupying the west facade of Reims, and the chronological relationship between the two sites: Kurmann 1987, p. 59;

H. Reinhardt also traced the style of the Reims prophet statues to Chartres. See Reinhardt 1963, p. 145.

356 Williamson 1995, p. 47.

357 Demus 1970, pp. 182-185.

358 Reference to Nicolaus’ art and that of Maas country goldsmiths in relation to the Ingeborg Psaltery and Villard dc Honnecourt, as well as Gothic sculpture: Reinhardt 1963, pp. 146-47.

359 Fillitz 1973, p. 279.

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