Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 27. (Budapest, 2009)
Emese PÁSZTOR - Márta TÓTH - Anikó PATAKI - Andrea VÁRFALVI: Turkish Cases from the Esterházy Treasury
% 4. Bow-case, Ottoman Empire, early seventeenth century, Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, Esterházy Treasury, inv. no.: 52.2865 (no. I.) (1598-1645) enriched his treasury to a significant degree by means of rich marriages. In 1624, he married his second wife, Krisztina Nyáry (1604-1641), the widow of Count Imre Thurzó (1598-1621). Later, in 1638, he gave the hand of Erzsébet Thurzó (16211642), the daughter of Krisztina Nyáry by her marriage to Count Imre Thurzó, in marriage to István Esterházy (1616-1641), his son by his first marriage, to ensure that the wealthy Thurzó inheritance merged together with the Esterházy family wealth. Inventories made after the death of Krisztina Nyáry (1641) make no mention of cases, and neither do those drawn up following the death of Miklós Esterházy (in 1645). However, an inventory of movable property compiled in 1642, the year of Erzsébet Thurzó's death, mentions - as well as many other Turkish artefacts - a tegez puzdra of red velvet embroidered with skófium with a bow and a puzdra full of arrows. 12 Accordingly, in the Erzsébet Thurzó bequest, which later became part of the Esterházy Treasury, we can probably acquaint ourselves with one of the two Turkish case sets covered in skófium-embroidered red velvet that were first mentioned in the Esterházy Treasury in 1654 (a set from which only a bow-case now remains) (no. I or nos. IV-V). Accordingly, it cannot be excluded that Erzsébet Thurzó inherited the cases from her father, Count Imre Thurzó; they must, therefore, have been made before 1621. 3 3 A 1654 inventory of Pál Esterházy s movable property at Fraknó mentions a total of three case sets: cases embroidered 'densely' with skófium on their entire surface (cases II and III) and two pairs of bow- and arrow-cases, and a case together with a puzdra (no. I and nos. IV-V), among them the Thurzó cases also.' 4 The case sets, which in 1654 still consisted of three pairs, featured in later Esterházy Treasury inventories also, among them the inventory drawn up in Hungarian in 1685 3' and the inventory drawn up in Latin in 1696. 1 6 They were, however, by then augmented with more recent pieces, which were in all likelihood originally trophies of war. Although the above sources do not mention the cases in the Esterházy Treasury as 76
