Romanesque stone carvings from the abbey church of Ercsi

The Benedictine monastery of Ercsi was located about 40 kilometers south of Buda (present—day Budapest), on an island of the Danube next to the much larger Csepel Island. The monastery was founded by Palatine Thomas (1185-1186), who was also buried there. The monastery ceased to exist during the Ottoman conquest of central Hungary and stones of the monastery church were used as building material for the church of Szigetújfalu during the 18th century. During the past summer, the exterior of the Szigetújfalu was restored, giving a chance to examine the Romanesque carvings used as building material there, and also providing a chance to remove some of these stones. The first report on this was written by Lilla Deklava Farbaky and Balázs Bodó, and was published in the December 2010 issue of the journal Örökség (Heritage), published by the National Office of Cultural Heritage. The issue can be read online (a least by those with some knowledge of Hungarian) – for the benefit of my other readers, I am providing an abstract of the text below.

“Topographical literature has noted before that the church of Szigetújfalu was built in 1770 using stones from the abandoned monastery of Ercsi. Géza Entz published this first in an article in 1965. During the Spring and Summer of 2010, while plaster was removed from the exterior of the church, a chance came to finally examine these stones.

Merry Christmas from Medieval Hungary!

Merry Christmas to all my readers! The photo above shows the Nativity fresco from the sanctuary vault of the church of Almakerék (Malmkrog/Mălâncrav), in Transylvania (present-day Romania), dating from around 1400.

Befitting the holiday spirit, I am including two medieval Hungarian Christmas songs here, as performed by Anonymous 4.

                                     

New medieval art websites, II.

My post written last month called attention the a number of interesting new websites. In recent weeks I've noticed some more interesting new websites dedicated to medieval art.

First I need to mention a new database, launched on December 15. The Gothic Ivories Project is an online database of ivory sculptures made in Western Europe ca. 1200-ca. 1530. The project is run by the Courtauld Institute of Art. In addition to the database - which currently gives access to about 700 ivories - the website also contains a news section, a bibliography and useful links. The goal of the project is very ambitious:  "a database which aims at including all readily available information on every surviving Gothic ivory, accompanied by at least one image." The website will gradually be added to through regular uploads.

Full digital editions of medieval illuminated manuscripts seem to multiply these days. One of these in particular caught my attention last week (via www.medievalists.net): The National Library of Wales made available a 15th century illuminated manuscript with the Battles of Alexander (Peniarth Ms 481D).
As the website tells us, this late 15th-century manuscript is in two parts, and both parts were likely bound together as one volume from the outset, probably in England. The first part of the manuscript was written by an English scribe and illustrated by a Flemish artist, while the second part of the manuscript was written and illuminated in Cologne. The Digital Mirror section of the library's website contains digital images of other medieval manuscripts, such as the Sherbrooke Missal.

The next resource is not exactly a website, but a subset of a larger resource. The Fototeca of the Biblioteca Berenson at Villa I Tatti (Florence) started an ambitious digitization project, the first results of which are already available. These include photos of the Life of Saint Francis cycle from the Upper Church of San Francesco in Assisi,  taken during restoration carried out by Bruno Zanardi in 1974-1983.
I had some problems getting to the actual images within the Harvard University Visual Information Access system. You get the full set of images most easily by searching there for "Zanardi". Each image has a subset of detail photos, with high quality scans.

Finally, I would like to mention a Hungarian website and accompanying database. The website of the National Széchényi Library is dedicated to early Hungarian printed books, and consists of two parts. First, the section titled The Hand-Press Period, contains detailed information about 15-16th century printing houses and printed books from the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, with lots of images. The other section - called Clavis Typographorum Regionis Carpathicae - is a database for printing and publishing that includes all data of printing houses and publishers working in the actual territory of the Hungarian state from the beginnings of local printing in 1473 to 1948. The entire website is available in Hungarian and English as well - making it a very useful resource for the early history of the printed book.

A note on the Fonthill Vase

The Fonthill Vase
National Museum of Ireland, Dublin 

The so-called Gaigneres-Fonthill vase at the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin is regarded as the oldest well-documented Chinese porcelain object to enter Europe. It is a porcelain vase with bluish-white (qingbai) glaze, dating from the beginning of the 14th century. The history of the vase is given as follows in almost all available English-language sources: The vase arrived in Europe probably as a gift to King Louis the Great of Hungary, given by an embassy of Nestorian Christians from China, who visited Pope Benedict XII in 1338. The piece then supposedly was mounted by King Louis, and given as a gift to Charles III of Durazzo, upon his ascension to the throne of Naples in 1381 (after the defeat of Louis' hated enemy, Queen Joan). That would explain the combination of Hungarian and Neapolitan Angevin coat of arms mounted on top of the vase. This theory, first elaborated by Mazerolle in 1897 (Gazette des Beaux-Arts), is based on a drawing by Gaigneres from 1713, which depicts the elaborate medieval silver-gilt mounting and enameled heraldic decoration of the vase (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale). Mazerolle did not know that the vessel, without its mount, was purchased by the National Museum of Ireland in 1882 for about £28.

The vase had been previously recorded at the Fonthill Abbey collection of William Beckford, which was sold in 1822-23, and the piece likely entered the Hamilton collection after that (The 'Hamilton palace sale' took place in 1882). The celebrated Chinese vase still had its mount preserved at Fonthill Abbey, as the following illustration proves (the picture comes from the book: An Illustrated History and Description of Fonthill Abbey, by John Rutter, 1823 - available via Google Books.)

The mount was removed at an unknown date during the 19th century, and the object entered the National Museum of Ireland unrecognized. The vase was identified by Arthur Lane, who then pieced together the entire story ("The Gaignieres-Fonthill Vase - A Chinese Porcelain of about 1300," Burlington Magazine 103 (1961), 124-132). Lane's article is still the general reference on the object, cited by many (for example: David Whitehouse: "Chinese Porcelain in Medieval Europe," in Medieval Archaeology, 1972, see online here.). This information is also given by the National Museum of Ireland website and the piece was featured with this data in an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Gaigneres drawing of the vase

with its medieval mounting  

Paris, BNF 

The study of Arthur Lane, Keeper of the Department of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum, also appeared in Hungarian in the art history journal Művészettörténeti Értesítő - sadly only after the premature death of Lane. Béla Krisztinkovich, a Hungarian expert on ceramics, published a response to Lane's article in the same Hungarian journal. It appears that his publication remained unnoticed outside Hungary (Krisztinkovich, Béla, "Hozzászólás Arthur Lane a Művészettörténeti Értesítő 1967/I. számában megjelent posztumusz cikkéhez a Gaignières-Fonthill vázáról," Művészettörténeti Értesítő 18, 1969/2, 187–192.). Krisztinkovich provides a close analysis of the Gaigneres drawing, which preserved the feature of the mount of the object, and its heraldic decoration. The heraldic decoration is that of the Neapolitan Angevin family, along with the coat of arm of the Hungarian Angevin kings. This of course gave rise to the theory outlined above. However, all branches of the Neapolitan Angevins had a claim to the throne of Hungary, and thus they used the Hungarian coat of arms in their heraldic representation as well. After analyzing the heraldic decoration and other features of the object in details, Krisztinkovich arrives at the conclusion that the vase was mounted for Queen Joan II, successor of King Ladislas at the throne of Naples (1414-1434). His father, Charles III of Naples was king of Hungary for a brief time (Charles II in Hungary) - but was murdered swiftly, making way ultimately for Sigismund of Luxemburg. Joan's brother, Ladislas, also claimed Hungary, but failed to obtain the crown. Similarly to her brother's claim, Joan used the title of Queen of Hungary until her death in 1435. The argument of Krisztinkovich is clinched by the inscription on the spout of the jug: JEHANA, clearly referring to Joan. Later, Jenő Horváth further elaborated this argument - his study is recommended as the best English-language overview of the Fonthill vase (reference below).

Then and now - Hungarians in Margat

The exhibition on Hungarian excavations at the Crusader castle of Margat, Syria, is opening at the Hungarian National Museum (Budapest) on December 17.

You can read about Margat and these excavations in my previous post. If you would like receive up-to-date information on the Margat project, you can join the Facebook group of the Syro-Hungarian Archaeological Mission.

Hungarian goldsmith objects enter the Metropolitan Museum, part II.

I could not resist - I have to include here a few other superb objects from the Salgó collection. All these have been published before in the catalog of the collection, and now appear in the Collection database of the Metropolitan Museum, as outlined in my previous post.

First here is this beautiful 16th century Hungarian belt buckle, decorated with pearls and rubies:

Belt buckle from the Salgó collection
Metropolitan Museum, 2010.110.1

Then there is a nice late 16th century silver-gilt tankard from Transylvania, made by the goldsmith Gregorius Gunesch (Nagyszeben/Hermannstadt/Sibiu). It is not illustrated in the collection database, the picture below is from the 1996 catalog.

Silver-gilt tankard from the Salgó collection
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010.110.6

Somewhat later is one of my favorite pieces from the Salgó-collection, a spice canister from 1681, commissioned by Michael Teleki, chancellor of Mihály Apafi, Prince of Transylvania. Once again the image below is from the 1996 catalog - a brief description is given by the Metropolitan Museum collection database.

Spice canister from the Salgó collection
Metropolitan Museum, 2010.110.39

There is a lot more in the collection. I will give an update here, once more images will be added to the collection database of the museum.

Hungarian goldsmith objects enter the Metropolitan Museum

Chalice with filigree enamel
Hungary, 1462
Metropolitan Museum of Art 

One of the most important collection of Hungarian goldsmith works outside Hungary was assembled by financier Nicolas M. Salgó, former US ambassador in Budapest. Salgó collected all kinds of Hungarian art; his painting collection was donated to the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers in 2006, as you can read here.

Most important, however, is his collection of Hungarian silver, which was cataloged by an expert from the Hungarian National Museum, Judit H. Kolba. The handsome English-language catalog was first published in 1996, and is still in print (Hungarian Silver: The Nicolas M. Salgo Collection. London, 1996): see here.

The collection includes two superb medieval chalices from Hungary, both coming from the Viennese collection of Nathaniel Rothschild. One of them, dating from 1462, can bee seen on the left. Both chalices are decorated with filigree enamel, a technique which came to prominence at the Hungarian court of King Sigismund during 1420s.

In 2010, much of the collection entered the Metropolitan Museum of art, as "Gift of The Salgo Trust for Education, New York, in memory of Nicolas M. Salgo". No press release has been issued about the transfer of the objects, but most objects already appear in the collection database. 83 objects are listed in the collection of the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. If you go to the main search page of the museum, entering "Salgo" will provide you with the full list of these - although not all objects are illustrated at this stage. You can find beautiful objects here, such as this 17th century coconut cup seen on the right.