István Kristó Nagy
The Esterházy Treasury
András Szilágyi: Az Esterházy kincstár (The Esterházy Treasury), with an Introduction by Péter Esterházy. Helikon, Budapest, 1994, 134 pp. Illustrated.
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The majority of King Matthias's treasury was dispersed or even destroyed. The finest surviving piece is a Calvary combining French Gothic and Italian Renaissance elements, still the most cherished piece in the treasury of Esztergom Cathedral. Another survived and that is in the Esterházy Treasury: a silver-gilt flask with a lid, made in Nuremberg around 1480.
Nuremberg, a centre of goldsmiths, had close ties to Hungary (Albrecht Dürer descended from a family of goldsmiths that had been working in Hungary). This was not surprising since Hungarian goldsmiths had created work nearly equal in quality to that of the West as early as the 9th century, when the Hungarians moved into the Carpathian Basin, and they maintained this quality. A couple of early pieces in the Esterházy collection are also associated with Hungarian goldsmiths: a canteen-shaped ornamental vessel of the same age as the previous one and an ornamental pitcher and plate from the mid-16th century, made in Kolozsvár (Cluj) in Transylvania. Unfortunately the latter, due to the severe wartime damage this Esterházy collection suffered in 1945, still awaits restoration. The collection also includes a cup of a somewhat later age, from Upper Hungary (Slovakia).
Like Matthias's cup, however, the majority of the early objects are from Nuremberg, including several works by Hans Petzold; one of these is an ornamental cup based on a Nautilus shell with the allegorical figure of Prudentia on top and another piece, the allegory of good govern- ment. A cup commissioned by János Szapolyai may have been made in Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) rather than Nuremberg. As Szilágyi points out, this particular piece also played a political role. Szapolyai wanted it for a royal wedding, when the daughter of the King of Poland, a relative of his, married Prince Elector Joachim of Brandenburg. Szapolyai was represented at the wedding by a high-ranking cleric who must have handed over the highly valuable chrysoprase bowl on the 1st of September 1535 as a gift - as well as a means of persuasion to help bring the Poles and Brandenburg, both adver- saries of the Habsburgs, round to making common cause with him. The outcome was disappointing and, in roundabout ways, the cup itself came into the hands of the other side, ending up in the treasury of the Esterházys, perennial supporters of the House of Habsburg - a fate which can almost be regarded as symbolic.
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There is, for instance, the fantastic, huge cup on which all kinds of pendants, pins, clasps and other articles worn by ladies were affixed. The extraordinary jewels had originally been made by the Brussels-born goldsmith Jan Vermeyen for Rudolph II who, although not a monarch of great resolution, was one of the greatest art-hoarders of all time. He took the jewels from Vienna to Prague, then parted with them in 1592 out of sheer self-interest, making them part of the dowry of his daughter, who married a member of the Wasa Dynasty. Fifty years later these pendants, clips and whatnots came to Hungary, worked onto the above-mentioned Polish cup, as a wedding gift to an Esterházy girl. That young lady had earlier been wooed by a Polish king of the House of Wasa; her choice, however, fell on the young Ferenc Nádasdy. Their wedding provided the occasion on which the jewel-bedecked cup was presented to them by the King of Hungary. However, it was once again not without further-reaching political interests that the gift was made: the Polish court was making efforts at this time to establish an effective anti-Turkish alliance. That alliance, how-ever, only came into being later on.
It was not through this marriage of an Esterházy girl that the treasure came into the Esterházy Treasury. At the time it was part of the collection of the husband's family, the Nádasdys, who were then rivals of the Esterházys. Nádasdy was a friend of Miklós Esterházy, converting to Catholicism under his influence, followed by some 40,000 serfs. However, on seeing that the Habsburgs were making no genuine effort to engage in warfare against the Turks, Nádasdy was part of an aristocratic conspiracy and, in something approximating a contemporary show-trial, was sentenced to death by beheading. Following the confiscation of the Nádasdy treasures by the Imperial court, Pál Esterházy came into the possession of the jewel-ornamented cup as a royal gift.
There were interests, power politics, the realistic possibility of driving out the Turks, marriage imbroglios, and sometimes highly risky enterprises behind all this, often on the field of battle.
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[...]Many articles from all over Europe ended up in the treasury as a consequence of the diplomatic missions carried out by the Esterházys, or through their relatives and even the family's martial triumphs. These include the silver-mounted bison's horn drinking vessel presented to one of the Princes of Transylvania, seeking anti-Habsburg allies, by Charles I, the later to be executed King of England. Later on, just like many other objects, it came into the possession of the Habsburg party, and specifically the Esterházy Treasury. Some two hundred years later, in 1829, Pál Antal Ester-házy received, as a gift from King George IV of England, a gold box bearing the King's portrait as a young man (the work of Mortham and Bone) in his capacity as the ambassador of the Viennese court to London; he was also made a Knight of the Bath.
Among the finest pieces are a Spanish pendant with Cupid flexing his bow (this features on the book's cover); two Italian pendants each with a ship, inlaid with precious stones, symbolizing the ship of marriage: with Amor or Mercury (the guide of souls) at the helm, the ship may pitch and roll but never go down (fluctuat nec mergitur). Then there are the rings, old coins and commemorative medals, the huge collection of which, comprising some eight thousand pieces, was reduced to some 100-200 by the end of the 18th century in circumstances which have never been clarified. The collection includes arms and weapons taken from the Turks, the majority of which is not in Budapest but in Forchenstein, Austria.
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István Kristó Nagy,
literary and art historian, was chief editor at Magvetõ Publishing House for thirty years until his retirement, and for several years was the Editor of Könyvvilág (Book World) magazine.
