Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 90-91.(Budapest, 1999)

VARGA, LÍVIA: The Reconsideration of the Portrait Reliefs of King Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490), and Queen Beatrix of Aragon (1476-1508)

Beatrix's portrait would appear to contradict this dating. The queen is represented wearing a headdress or veil which is commonly explained as the veil of a widow (fig. 25). She appears in the same way on a medal in the Samuel H. Kress Collection (Washington, National Gallery) and on its less successful copy in the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest.

67 Bona of Savoya, widow of Giangaleozzo Sforza, also wears a veil on her medal, and Isabella of Aragon, the widowed princess of Milan, is represented in the same way on her medal, made in Naples in 1507.

68 The representation of the veil, as a symbol of widowhood, has always been used to date these reliefs. Beatrix appears to be rather corpulent on her relief due to her illness from about 1488 on. It shows the family characteristics of short neck and double chin, defiant and proud, if without much dignity. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the beauty of the young queen, described by Bonfini and Galeotto after contemplating her Budapest portrait.

69 Unlike her representation on the medal, Beatrix does not appear here as a young woman, and there is no 47. Fragment of the garland with fruit anc motives flor 67 Hill, attributed the medal of the queen to Melioli. and Pollard to the circle of Giancristoforo Romano, while some Hungarian and foreign scholars accepted ValtoiTs attribution to Giancristoforo Romano. In the recent past Gcrevich took up the same attribution, and argued that since the profiles of the medal and that of the relief of Queen Beatrix arc the same, they must have been made by the same artist, that is, by Giancristoforo Romano. It seems to me that on the medal Beatrix looks younger and thinner. Beside the fact that she is represented on both works in profile, wearing a veil, the two works have little in common. The representation of the veil is different, and so is the style; furthermore, no artist could have possibly missed her characteristic profile line. The style difference between the two works is indicative: the formal language on the relief is heavier than that on the medal, and the differences in style are just as great as between the Budapest relief of Beatrix and that of the sublime three dimensional portrait bust of Isabella of Aragon (Louvre), made by Giancristoforo Romano. The medal and the relief could not possibly have been made by the same hand (sec Valton, P., Gian Cristoforo Romano medailleur. Revue Numismatique 1885, pp. 316-324; Hill, G. F., A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini, London, 1930, p. 60, no. 238/b; Hill, G. F. - Pollard, J. G., Renaissance Medals from the Samuel Kress Collection at the National Gallery-of Art, (Washington DC). London - New York, 1967, no. 83; Norris, A. S., Gian Cristoforo Romano: The Courtier as Medalist, in Italian Medals: Studies in the History of Arts, 21, ed. J. G. Pollard, Washington, 1987. pp. 131-141; Gcrevich, op, cil. (n. 2) pp. 30-3 1 ; Shcr, S. K.. The Currency of Fame, in Portrait Medals of the Renaissance, exh. cat., London - New York, Frick Collection, 1994.) 68 Leithe-Jasper, M., Medaille auf Beatrix von Aragonien, Königin von Ungarn, in Matthias Corvinus und die Renaissance in Ungarn. 1982. exh. cat., pp. 193-194, 232-234. 69 Bcrzeviczy, A., Beatrix királyné (1457-1508), (Queen Beatrix). Budapest, 1908; Meiler, S., Diva Beatrix, Zeitschrift fur Kunstwissenschaft 9 (1955) pp. 73-80.