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

VADÁSZI Erzsébet: Apafi Mihály tükre

ERZSÉBET VADÁSZI THE MIRROR OF MIHÁLY APAFI When in January, 1657, the young Mihály Apafy set out for the Polish mountains from his manor at Ebesfalva, holding a fine harness and equipped with plenty of weapons, he could hardly imagine what was waiting for him after the initial triumphs at Cracow and Warsaw. Dressed in an expensive clothing and sitting on a saddle decorated with jewels, he accompanied György Rákóczi II, ruling prince of Transylvania, together with 13,000 other soliders. Upon their arrival, the allied Swedish troops were rapidly fleeing back home, lead by King Charles X, in order to protect their home against Frederick III, King of Denmark, who was an ally of the Hapsburgs. Having signed the humiliating peace contract with the Polish in July, Rákóczi was prepared to go home if the Tatar army from Crimea, encouraged by the Turks, did not stand in the way. The ruling prince then broke out with 300 horsemen and hurried home to his family in Ecsed, leaving behind his army that had diminished in the Polish warfare to three or four thousand soldiers, under the leadership of János Kemény. The exhausted army was unable to hold the Tatars back; Mihály Apafy was captured by the Tatar Khan, Méhemet Kéri, and spent almost four years (two months less) in the city of Or in Crimea, as an ironed captive of Harash bey. It was probably this place where he had brought or was presented with his travelling mirror showing the date of his capture, which is going to be the subject of present study.

1 The mirror can be closed like a tryptich; it is made of black-stained maplewood. When closed, the wings are made of iron over a pergamen base on the outside; each part of the the inside is decorated with a plum-stone shaped rosette and applied leaves made of tin, in an inlay enriched with tin lines of leaves. The mirror is dated with painted 16-57 at the bottom and M:A: initials at the top. The cresting shapes an onion dome, ornamented with polychrome painted mica and a tin rosette created from mouchette motifs. The inside of the wings is decorated with set-in panels of painted flower stems and grape clusters, equipped with three iron bands. Another marking is composed in the decoration, saying Michael Apafi Anno Domini 1657. Its middle part contains the mirror: the red, micacous framework is decorated with green arabesque rosettes in a rhomboid field, between the pierced, gilt tin foliage mountwork of the corners. The inner border connects the corner rosettes with stylised, gilt tin foliage running along.

2 The mirror was first exhibited as a Venetian work at the exhibition organised for the Victims of the Hungarian Flood, arranged in Budapest, in the palace of Count Alajos Károlyi in May 1876. The display mainly covered historic and art historic remnants and relics.

3 It was here when Count Béla Radvánszky found the mirror "worthy of attention",