Majorossy Judit: Egy történelmi gyilkosság margójára. Merániai Gertrúd emlékezete, 1213 - 2013. Tanulmánykötet - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, A. sorozat: Monográfiák 2. (Szentendre, 2014)
VI. English Summaries
To the Margin of a Historical Murder - English Summaries connected to a well-defined burial grave within that central part of the church were they were found. Nevertheless, in 1981 the stone-walled grave No. 57 was discovered together with skeletal human bones. If one draws a ten-metre diameter circle around this grave and projects it onto the ground plan of the church indicating the locations of the small fragments identified belonging to Queen Gertrude’s sepulchre, the result is that out of the until now known 65 fragments altogether 43 pieces fall within that circle.Therefore, according to the author there is no doubt that the grave No. 57 can be connected to the queen’s burial. In addition, it is such a central place within the church where royal funerary monuments are used to be. In addition to the last ideas concerning the outlook of the sepulchre published by Gerevich in the 1980s, the plastic reconstruction was also prepared in 1984. Since then, however, during the systematization of the fragments nowadays preserved in the Hungarian National Gallery several new pieces were identified as belonging to the same queenly tomb. Therefore, in 1994 a new reconstructional idea was published by the author which is further refined in the present article. Accordingly, the sepulchre was situated above the mentioned grave from which it was separated with a short (approximately 5,8 cm) red marble plate. A similar red marble plate with encarved letters (fragments of the words ANNO and PERHENNIS were found) covered the cubic monument with arches and sitting figures. On the top of the construction, the author supposes a lying gisant figure (the queen herself) with a pillow under her head behind which an angelic figure(s) must have knelt with a censer in its hands. The author also analysed the paint spots discovered on several fragments and on that basis it can be stated that the sepulchre was richly gilded and was of several colours. The body parts of the figures were light incarnadine red, while their clothes were painted blue and scarlet red with golden parts. The architectural elements of the sepulchre were mainly of a golden colour. Finally, the similarly rich French parallels to the Gertrude funerary monument are discussed, especially that of Philippe Dagobert, the younger brother of King (Saint) Louis IX of France, in St. Denis that must have been prepared not earlier than 1235. Since the sepulchre of Queen Gertrude is - according to our present knowledge - dated around the early 1220s, thus the archetype of such funerary monuments should be looked for among the French burials of the 1210s and 1220s. Christopher Mielke The Material Culture of Queen Gertrude and Her Contemporaries See the original article in English. Béla Zsolt Szakács The Art of the Queens — the Queens of the Art Historians The artistic production commissioned by medieval queens is heterogeneous regarding its style, content, iconography or genre. Therefore, it does not constitute a group of works of art which would require a special art historical study. However, the commissions follow some sort of patterns, and thus we should concentrate on the institution instead of the queens. In this way the historical approaches of Percy Ernst Schramm and his Hungarian followers, János Bak and Eva Kovács are exemplary. The late Eva Kovács initiated a research focusing on royal commissions which did not stop after her death in 1998. One aspect is the role of the widowed queens. In Hungary, one of the most influential of all was Queen Elizabeth the Elder (cca. 1305-1380), the widow of Charles I and the mother of King Louis the Great. Supporting the mendicant orders and the pilgrimage sites, her commissions formed part of a political propaganda, often accompanied by rich heraldic representation of the Angevin dynasty. Many of the artistic objects connected to her are international in their character as, for example, the Madonna of Piliscsaba (of Bohemian origin) and the reliquary altar of Queen Elizabeth (now in the Cloisters Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) which is a costly example of Parisian enamel works. Both of them represent the nurturer Madonna thus underlining the importance of motherhood, the major element of the identity of the Mother Queen. Therefore, personal and political, individual and dynastic aspects are interestingly combined in her patronage. Another aspect is the mediating role which can be evidently suspected in all cases when the queen is of foreign origin. Many of them were of German origin as Judith, the sister of Emperor Henry IV (the wife of King Solomon) 317
