Hungarian azurite

When the previously unknown fresco of the Virgin and Child was uncovered in the Inner City parish church of (Buda)Pest, the restorer and art historians alike were struck by the excellent preservation of large patches of azurite blue. The cloak of the Virgin and that of the Child is the same blue, and the background of the painting is painted with a darker shade of the same blue (azurite mixed with black). This find reminds us that during the Middle Ages, Hungary was one of the primary sources of azurite in Europe. The mineral (a copper-ore) came from the copper mines of northern Hungary, from places such as Rudabánya. It is well-known that ultramarine was the most expensive pigment in the Middle Ages - but it was very hard to get, and azurite was a good alternative. You can read about the pigment a lot, for example in Daniel V. Thompson's classic book on the Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting.

Paint samples have been analysed from the Budapest fresco, and beautiful microscopic photos of the pigment were made by restorer Éva Galambos - such as this one to the right.

The Virgin Mary from
the Ghent Altarpiece 

Hungarian azurite sources became generally unavailable to Europe after the Ottoman Turks occupied much of the country during the 16th century. There is a classic story, reported among others by Karel van Mander, that reminds us of these historical circumstances. Around 1558, Michiel Coxie was making a copy of the Ghent altarpiece of Jan and Hubert van Eyck (the panels of which are today in Berlin and Munich), for Philip II of Spain (also the Duke of Flanders). As Karel van Mander tells us, Coxie fulfilled this commission admirably. Coxie, however, was unable to obtain azurite of suitable quality - Coxie explains that this type of azure pigment, a natural coloring, comes from some mountains of Hungary, and was easier to obtain earlier, before the country came under Ottoman rule. Coxie in the end was able to get the needed azurite on the order of the king directly from Titian, who still had some. Van Mander goes on to emphasize that only the azurite needed for the cloak of the Virgin was worth 32 ducats. Did Jan van Eyck use Hungarian azurite, too? The sources do not reveal this - but maybe the new technical examination of the Ghent altarpiece will provide some answers.

You can read van Mander's original text in the Het Schilder-boek, in the online edition of the Dutch Digital Library. The story is told in the Life of Jan and Hubert van Eyck.

(See also my previous posts on the history of the Inner City parish church, and on various wall-paintings inside that church.)

Medieval holdings of Budapest museums

I often find myself trying to explain the system of Budapest's major art museums to foreigners. Although it is a clear system, it can still be confusing at times. For example, you can find important medieval artworks in all major museums of the capital. In this post, I will give a brief overview of the system, and list the most important medieval holdings of Budapest museums.

1. Hungarian National Museum (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum)

This is Hungary's oldest public museum, founded in 1802. The present building of the museum, designed by Mihály Pollack, opened in 1847. Originally, all kinds of collections were housed here, a lot of which formed the basis of later museums. Today, it is basically a museum dedicated to the history of Hungary. The museum houses a large number of medieval objects from the territory of historic and modern Hungary. Various objects - including stone carvings, pottery, etc. - are held in the Archaeological Department and are on view in the Medieval Lapidary. Departments of the Historical Repository hold all kinds of medieval objects - furniture, textiles, weapons and ceramics. Of particular note is the Collection of Metalwork, with the best selection of Hungarian goldsmith works. Highlights of these collections are on view in the permanent exhibition. Until 2000, the Coronation regalia were kept here, too - today only the Coronation mantle remains in the Museum. The museum has a useful website, with lot of English language content - although not every page is translated from Hungarian. Start browsing here.

2. Museum of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Múzeum)

Founded in 1872 and modeled after the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Applied Arts was the second major public museum in Hungary. It is housed in an Art Nouveau building designed by Ödön Lechner, opened in 1896. The collections of the museum include all fields of decorative arts - metalwork, furniture, ivories, textiles, ceramics. This is the only major national museum in Hungary where objects of Hungarian origin are side-by-side with other European works. When it comes to medieval objects, the collection is stronger in general European art (most Hungarian objects can be found in the National Museum). Particular highlights include medieval ivories, important goldsmith works from the Esterházy-treasury, chasubles and other medieval textiles, etc. Some of the highlights are on view in the permament exhibition of the museum, but the website only provides information on them in Hungarian. You can still browse the collection and picture galleries of highlights here. The museum's permanent exhibition of the history of furniture is located in the Nagytétény mansion on the outskirts of Budapest, and includes a number of medieval and renaissance objects.

3. Museum of Fine Arts (Szépművészeti Múzeum)

Officially founded in 1896, the Museum of Fine Art is based on the Esterházy-collection, purchased by the Hungarian state in 1871, and on numerous other acquisitions carried out during the last decades of the 19th century. The main building of the museum opened in 1906. The museum is basically dedicated to monuments of western art, including Egyptian and ancient art, stretching all the way to the present day. Focus is on paintings, drawings and sculpture (for other fields, see the Museum of Applied Arts above). Hungarian works have been transferred to the Hungarian National Gallery (see below). In terms of medieval art, The Collection of Old Master Paintings is particularly strong in Italian Trecento works as well as German/Austrian Late Gothic paintings. There are a number of outstanding medieval drawings in the collection as well, and there is a large collection of medieval sculpture - the latter presently not on view. For information and highlights, visit the website of the museum. In 2006, the Museum of Fine Arts organized and housed the great international exhibition dedicated to Emperor Sigismund.

4. Hungarian National Gallery (Nemzeti Galéria)

The National Gallery was created in 1957, with the intention of providing a separate museum dedicated to Hungarian art. It is primarily based on material transferred from the Museum of Fine Arts. When the new museum was transferred to its present building - in the former royal palace of Buda - the Old Hungarian Collection was also transferred there. This is a rich repository of Hungarian medieval art, consisting of medieval stone carvings and sculpture, panel paintings and a large number of complete altarpieces. The collections can be browsed on the website of the museum.

5. Budapest History Museum (Budapesti Történeti Museum)

The main site of this museum  - the Castle Museum - is also located in the building of the former royal palace of Buda (this site opened in 1967). Lower levels of the museum incorporate the remains of the medieval royal palace. The museum is an archaeological and historical collection - similar to the Hungarian National Museum - focusing on the territory of Budapest. As the Buda side of present-day Budapest was the medieval seat of Hungarian kings, the museum is particularly rich in medieval objects, most of them archaeological finds. The famous statue-find from the period of King Sigismund is also on view here. New excavations keep adding significant material to the collections. The English version of the website is not quite complete, but you can read about the permanent exhibitions here. In 2008, the museum organised and housed the exhibition titled Matthias Corvinus, the King.

6. Museum of Ethnography (Néprajzi Múzeum)

Started in 1872 as a unit of the Hungarian National Museum, and becoming an independent institution in 1947, the Museum of Ethnography moved into the former Palace of Justice in 1873. It might be surprising that I am listing it here, as the museum has no medieval collection - but it does include a number of medieval objects in its collections of European furniture, ceramics and textiles. The website of the museum is available in English, but the collection database is only in Hungarian. The Ethnological Archives also contain a lot of material about medieval buildings and wall-paintings.


I did not add pictures of actual medieval objects to this post - but you will find plenty to look at by following the links above. Of course, it is best to come and see these museums for yourself! If you would like to know even more about museums in Hungary, visit the central website for Hungarian museums.

Destruction of the centers of medieval Hungary

On August 29 1526, the army of Suleiman the Magnificent defeated the Hungarian army at Mohács. King Louis II died on the battlefield, and the sultan's army marched on to take the capital, Buda. At that time, the Turkish army withdrew - but in 1541, Suleiman took the capital of the divided kingdom without having to lay siege to it. Two years later, he occupied the towns of Pécs, Székesfehérvár and Esztergom, and Visegrád fell soon after that. Thus all the centrally located towns - the Medium Regni - became part of the Ottoman Empire for 150 years. Because of the prohibition of figural religious imagery, this period led to the destruction of altarpieces, paintings, statues and to the covering up of frescoes. Damage to buildings was caused by neglect, but even more during the wars waged in order to reconquer these towns, especially during the Long War ('15 years' war,' 1591-1606) and the final campaign of 1683-1687. When the towns were retaken by the Christians, it was largely ruins what they found. Remains of important medieval buildings were generally taken down as new structures were erected during the 18th century.

As a result, the most important medieval sites of Hungary only survived as ruins, their remains recovered during various archaeological campaigns. The sites include Buda, the capital of the Kingdom; Esztergom, the seat of Hungary's Primate Archbishop; Székesfehérvár, the coronation and burial place of Hungarian kings; and Visegrád, perhaps the most important royal castle complex of the land. 

The photos below illustrate what little is left of these sites. Rather than illustrating the destruction (about which many contemporary prints were made), I chose mainly photos showing moments of discovery - although the first example will be of destruction.

Buda and Óbuda

This is an image of Buda castle from 1686, at the time when the center of the Kingdom was retaken by the joint Christian armies. The print shows the castle hill, with the ruins of the medieval royal palace on top of the hill. Very little of this survived when the new, Baroque royal palace was built in the 18th century.

The medieval parish church of Pest (part II.) - A remarkable discovery

This post focuses on the medieval fresco decoration of the Inner City parish church of Pest - you can read my introduction to the history of the building here.
Not much survived of the original painted decoration of the Inner City parish church. Knowing the history of the building, it is not surprising that all these are associated with the choir and ambulatory of the building. Over the years, the following fragments have been discovered:

• Some fragments of the  earliest painted decoration, found on broadstones, during excavations, surviving from the Romanesque-period chancel of the church.
• Head of a bishop and of a female figure, found on fragments of the late Gothic tabernacle. These frescoes - especially the bishop - were in quite good condition at the time of their discovery in the 1930s. They were built in when the tabernacle was reconstructed - today they are just barely legible.

Head of a bishop, fresco fragment on the Gothic tabernacle
(Condition in 1933)

• Fragments of scenes and figures inside the wall niches encircling the choir ambulatory. These have been discovered during the 1940s, and they have been detached and restored many times. Not much remains: just two scenes - Christ on the Mount of Olives and a Calvary - can be identified, and a few heads of angels survived in the upper circle of the blind tracery articulating the niches. These frescoes can be dated to the early decades of the 15th century.

Fragments of Christ on the Mount of Olives,
with the Veil of Veronica above

The medieval parish church of Pest (part I.)

The Inner City parish church is perhaps the most frequently-seen, yet most overlooked major medieval building in Budapest. Standing in the middle of the city, right next to Elizabeth bridge, modern-day citizens of Budapest zoom by it every day. The church, however, preserves great medieval artworks and still holds many surprises. On the occasion of the discovery of a great 14th century fresco inside the church, I am writing a two-part post on the history of the edifice.

Modern-day Budapest was created in 1873, when the cities of Buda, Pest and Óbuda were united. The center of Buda, the settlement on castle hill was founded after the Mongol invasion (Óbuda, or Old-Buda was somewhat north, at the area of the Roman town of Aquincum). Pest, on the other side of the Danube, was older. For most of the Middle Ages, Buda - the site of the royal castle - played a more important role, but Pest developed into an important town as well. In the center of the town, at the spot where the Danube was narrowest and at the site of a Roman fort, the parish church of the town was built.

Romanesque carved stones built into the
foundations of the pier of the triumphal arch

Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the first stone church was built around 1200. It was a Romanesque basilica, of which some parts survived inside the south tower of the present structure, and in the crypt of the present building.

This church was badly damaged in 1241, but it is unclear to what extent it had to be rebuilt. We know that during the second half of the 14th century, the chancel of the church was greatly expanded and fully rebuilt into a hall-church with an ambulatory. Further expansion was carried out in the late 15th century, when chapels were added to both sides of the nave, and new portals were opened into the side aisles. An imposing south tower was also built at this time. Side chapels were also added to both sides of the western end of the chancel area.

Only the chancel survived the Turkish wars, while the nave had to be entirely rebuilt in the early 18th century. Instead of the three-aisled medieval structure, the Baroque nave is a spacious hall, but the row of chapels on either side have been preserved.

Map from 1785, with the parish church and city hall in the center

For centuries, this church stood at the center of old Pest, adjacent to City Hall. A series of small shops were attached to the body of the church. This traditional center of Pest survived all the way to the end of the 19th century, and is thus known for a series of photographs (see the one by György Klösz on top of this page). The church was part of the urban fabric, with small squares around it. Unfortunately Budapest lost its center when the new Elizabeth bridge was built during the 1890s. City Hall and dozens of other buildings were demolished, and new avenues were opened. The church just narrowly escaped demolition - there were plans to tear it down or to move it, but in the end the new roadway leading to the bridge curved right along the church.