Mikó Árpád – Verő Mária - Jávor Anna szerk.: Mátyás király öröksége, Késő reneszánsz művészet Magyarországon (16–17. század) 2. kötet (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/4)
The English Summary of Volumes I—II
ENIKŐ BUZÁSI PORTRAITS, PAINTERS AND PATRONS The Portrait in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 16 th-17 th Century What the sources say Very little is known of 16 th-17 th century portrait painters in Hungary, or of their work. Municipal documents in the second half of the 16th century and the following few decades list many items which are not really art works. Most references are to housepainting-like work. More important paintings were commissioned not by municipalities or their institutions but high-ranking commoners or aristocrats. Hardly more than a dozen artists who worked for clients in Hungary in the 16th and 17th century are known by name, and most of them only in the form of references to their work (e.g. Tregele, Georg Stockhammer, Johann David Ficht probably of Pozsony [Bratislava], Michael Tagly of Wiener Neustadt, Vaclav Svoboda of Lipnik, Heinrich Müller, Georg Pohman, Leonhard Juvenel, Friedrich Stoll, Johann Ledentu of Vienna, Wolfgang Resch of Graz). Surviving paintings known to be their work are very few in number (Johann Michael Tripsius: funerary portrait of Aurora Formentini, wife of Ádám Batthyány 1653, Wolfgang Poppe: funerary picture of György Zichy, city parish priest of Sopron, 1675, IX-20, Johann Caspar Hoffstädter, Erzsébet Balassa, wife of Miklós Illésházy, 1693). Portraits and paintings, as is clear from the sources, were not regarded as having financial value. They are not mentioned in wills or inheritance cases, or in documents of property distribution. They had a decorative status in the 17th century, just like the tapestries and carpets which are found in much larger numbers in inventories and wills. This shows that owners of paintings — with the exception of the two patrons with their own collections, Ferenc Nádasdy (1623—1671) and Pál Esterházy (1635-1713) — regarded them as part of the furniture. The early demand for portraits In the second half of the 16th century, the portrait had two functions for patrons: as a document of spiritual affinity, and as an accurate record of the subject. It was then that the term "vera effigies" appeared and gained force in the text of graphic images, a sign that being a true likeness had not necessarily been a requirement of the portrait up to that time. It was probably this desire that caused gravestone portraits to become increasingly true likenesses, the outstanding example being the Nagyszombat (Trnava) tomb of Miklós Oláh, Archbishop of Esztergom (1493-1568). The sources also mention minor portrait collections belonging to prelates raised in the humanist spirit of Miklós Oláh: the legacies of István Radéczy, Bishop of Eger and regent (locumtenens regius) (d. 1581), Zakariás Mossóczy, Bishop of Nyitra (d. 1587) and István Fejérkövy, Archbishop of Esztergom and regent (d. 1596) included portraits of several church notables. Although these pictures have not survived, etchings probably similar to them made by Martino Rota, who worked in Vienna from 1573 onwards, give some impression of them. Several painted images are known of from the correspondence of Hugo Blotius, head of the imperial library in Vienna, who was friendly with the humanists in Hungary. János Liszthy Bishop of Győr and Chancellor and Imre Forgách, had themselves painted in Prague by a Flemish artist for Blotius' collection (Musœum Blotianum), which also included portraits of István Fejérkövy, István Radéczy and the physician Georg Purchkircher. Probably one of the earliest portraits painted in Hungary is of Miklós Zrínyi, who later achieved immortality as the hero of the siege of Szigetvár. The mode of Zrinyi's appearance and self-representation, and the abbreviated inscription on the picture, date it to around 1541/42. From analogies, it may have been the work of a painter who had studied in north Italy (Veneto?). Held in the collection of Ferdinand, Archduke of Tyrol, the painting was the basis of a portrait engraving by Dominicus Custos which appeared in the Armamentarium of 1601. The links among Austrian, Czech, Hungarian and Croatian-national aristocracy in the highest echelons of the Habsburg Empire were artistic as well as political bonds. One example of this is a portrait of Erzsébet Thurzó, wife of Jaroslav z Pernsteina, painted around 1555 and attributed to Jakob Seisenegger. Another group of pictures, bound into what is known as the Portrait Book of Hieronymus Beck von Leopoldsdorf, have links to the shared past of the Habsburg court and the Kingdom of Hungary, which had lost its court after the Turkish invasion. Forty-one of the original entries in the book give the source of the portraits as the collection of one Countess Blagay, most of these being of the widow of Louis II of Hungary, Mary of Hungary, who went to live in the Netherlands in 1531, and her Brussels circle. This information comes from Günther Heinz, who published the volume of portraits. He was unable, however, to explain the relationship between the Brussels court and the wife of the Croatian aristocrat Count Ferenc Blagay, née Maria Magdalena Lamberg. It is possible that the link was through Countess Blagay 's father, Joseph von Lamberg or her mother, Anna Schwetkowisch, who were members of the circle of the Hungarian Queen Anna Jagiello, sister-in-law of Mary of Hungary. Joseph von Lamberg was the Queen's chief steward and coun-
