Mikó Árpád szerk.: Reneissance year 2008 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/1)

ÁRPÁD MIKÓ: The Legacy of King Matthias. Late Renaissance Art in Hungary (16th-17th Century)

by notes entered by their owners. The historian Miklós Istvánffy, however, had his coat of arms applied to some of his books. Zakariás Mossóczy owned a copy ot the work by Nicolaus Copernicus' setting out the heliocentric worldview. Less well known are some books from the libraries of Transylvanian princes: there is one by the ancient Creek historian Xenophon, which belonged to John Sigismund (John II, so called 'elected King of Hungary'), in a leather binding bearing a coat of arms. István Báthory had books bound and brought from Cracow (e.g. the complete works ot Plato) for the future Prince of Transylvania Sigismund Báthory. Although a great many books were produced in Hungary at that time, their decoration was simple. Figurative book illustrations of high standard only came into the country from foreign presses. In tenus of decoration, the books of the time divide into two categories. One comprises law books, particularly the Tripartitum (by István Werbőczy), which influenced the observance of the law and the outlook of the Hungarian nobility for several centuries. One of its many editions has a title page with woodcut medallion portraits of all the Hungarian kings from Matthias and the Jagiellos to the Habsburgs, just like the title page of a codex. (This version Frontispiece ot the breviary ot |ános Listhius, 15 i s Győr, Egyházmegyei Könyvtár, Ms. I. 8. >p ot Gyor Hungarian Humanists and Late Renaissance Art Printed books are an important medium of the second half of the 16th century in Hungary. They are perhaps not spectacular, but nevertheless provide the intellectual background to the arts, which often only appear in a fragmentary form. Pozsony (Bratislava), the seat of the offices of state, was also a major intellectual centre: it was here that the educated governing elite gathered, and the chapters also fled here to escape the Ottoman occupation. A humanist circle emerged under the protective roof of István Radéczy, Bishop of Eger and royal governor. Some of its members - such as Zakariás Mossóczy, Miklós Istvánffy andjános Zsámboky — were also book collectors. The scholarly books of the time usually only had practical bindings, and the books belonging to the Pozsony residents Nicasius Ellebodius, the most outstanding Aristotelian philologist of he 16th century, and Georg Purkircher, the humanist physician, can only be identified The Holy Grown with the coats-of-arms of its lands, the 1670s (?) Budapest, Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Történelmi Képcsarnok