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

ZLINSZKYNÉ STERNEGG Mária: Emlékmeghatározások

Augsburg, for the illegal use of his prints. The technique of application must have been fairly popular and furniture decorated in this way appeared in a large circle all over Europe; besides Old Bavaria pieces decorated with woodcuts were found in Suabia, Frankland, Switzerland and in the Austrian Alps.

3 Chests with woodcuts, similar to the one in the collection of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, were made in the south-eastern region of Upper-Bavaria. The use of architectural pictures on these woodcuts was popular in the valley of the Inn and Salzach rivers and some other areas of furniture-making, including Bad Reichenhall, Trostberg, Micsbach and Ruhpolding. Recently found furniture from the first half of the seventeenth century prove that the centre of the technique was most likely Trostberg and its surroundings.

4 These architectural illustrations were modelled first of all on the sixteenth century intarsia art of Southern Germany, inspired by Italy; and partly on woodcuts used as models for intarsia-making. We may find some chests from the seventeenth century where these woodcuts were directly applied on the fronts. The basic variants of the picture are displayed on the woodcuts of a huge chest from the early seventeenth century, made in Heimhilgcn, near Trostbcrg (see pict.2)

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: 1: the assymetrical building motif with chess-board flooring and 2: the symmetrically positioned gate towers. The latter woodcut is identical with the one appearing in the two side arches of the chest in the collection of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts. The chest in the Stadtisches Heimatmuseum of Bad Reichenhall

6 is also decorated with the same woodcut. The woodcuts show an onion-domed tower with two windows, supported by a balustrade built over a richly decorated front gate. There is a smaller, onion-domed tower with cresting and crenelles on either side - they are symbols of defense. There are windcocks with flags on the top of the small side towers. The chess-board floor creates the sense of spatiality, the depth of space. The other woodcut of the chest described above (see pict.

3), showing the assymetrical building is also drawn in perspectives and is identical with another woodcut, appearing in the double arch of the front of the Bad Reichcnhall chest (see pict.4): to the right, there is a high, Renaissance palace with ornamental facade, pierced with an arched double gate. The high roof is enriched with small towers and garret windows; a soldier holding a flag (Landsknecht) stands on the roof, with a smaller human figure beside him. To the left, there is a lower, Renaissance building with towers, pierced at the bottom with a double arch, having small, round and rectangular windows and a domed roof. The background discloses an arched gate with rustics, revealing a tower with windows and a circular balcony; the double dome of the tower is decorated with a moon crescent on a spear. The representation of the woodcuts with large arches on the Heimhilgcn chest are similar. It is claimed that this woodcut was signed by Wolf Drechsel of Nuremberg, who was copying and enriching sheets by Erasmus Loy, with inserting tiny figures, such as the stalk, carrying a snake in its beak while flying to its nest. The two small figures on the Budapest chest are also "staffage" ones, inserted by the artist in order to fill the illustration with life. The chest in the collection of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts is a real rarity in Hungary; its woodcuts were cleaned and conserved by Katalin Soós in 1981. She performed the procedure "in situ", which meant that some parts of the