Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 104. (Budapest, 2006)

TERÉZ GERSZI: Pieter Coecke Van Aelst and Andrea Mantegna

PIETER COECKE VAN AELST. SAINT PAUL BELORE AGRIPPA. VIENNA. ALBERTINA sojourn in Constantinople in 1533-1534, but the series of woodcuts was published much later, only after his death, in 1553. Nevertheless, the woodcuts themselves must have been executed earlier, after the artist's return home, under his supervision. This is evidenced by the drawing qualities of the series consisting of seven parts, deserving of attention from several aspects. The diverse narrative is set in a broad landscape and the individual sheets register the artist's experiences from the camping in Slavonia to the stay in Constantinople. They record the eating and funerary customs and ceremonies of the Turks. The last composition renders the Sultan Suleiman and his populous retinue with the view of Constantinople in the background. The figures of this work, of particular interest in its own time also because of its subject matter, are characterised by the same stylistic features which were enumerated above in connection with the master's drawings. Here, in the scenes of everyday life, the treatment of the wellformed, dynamic figures is especially varied. Coecke took pleasure in rendering stepping and standing figures in different poses in the foreground of various scenes of the woodcuts, similar to the foreground figures of the Budapest drawing. Aversion of the group of the young servant and his ass in the Budapest drawing can be found in the figure of the pack-mule and his easilv ambling attendant in the foreground of the second sheet of the woodcut series representing