Erika Kiss

"ymaige d'or de Nostre Seigneur émaillé de blanc"

A magnum opus by Éva Kovács

Éva Kovács: L'âge d'or de l'orfčvrerie parisienne au temps des Princes de Valois. Dijon, Éditions Faton - Budapest, Balassi Kiadó, 2004. 412 pp. Illustrated.

...
In 1494, Matthias' natural son, János Corvinus, pledged the unique and priceless work as security on a loan from Tamás Bakócz, then Bishop of Eger. Bakócz, who eventually became archbishop and came into full possession, donated it to the chapel he had founded and designated as his own burial place. Escaping the ravages of history, the Bakócz Chapel of Esztergom has survived as the most important Renaissance monument of Jagellonian Hungary. Ever since 1516, the year of the donation, the artwork has continually been inventoried among the treasures of the episcopal see of Esztergom. In this way, we are able to track its fate down through the centuries: we know, for example, that in the late sixteenth century the art-loving Archduke, Matthias, had the work moved to Vienna so that he could admire its extraordinary beauty in person.
A sensational turning point came in the mid-1970s, when Éva Kovács, the author of the book under review, stumbled on important data (See: "L'orfčvrerie parisienne et ses sources." Revue de l'Art 28, 1975, pp. 25-33). Following his death in 1404, an inventory of the property of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was compiled. Listed there was an "elongated [i.e. tall] gold cross", which the author could positively identify with the golden Crucifixion of The Corvinus Calvary after comparing the type and arrangement of the figures, the precious stones and the pearls. The inventory revealed that this unique artwork had been given to Philip the Bold by his wife, Margaret of Flanders: "And this was given by my lady to my said lord on New Year's Day of 1402."
The French courtly custom of those days required that the exchange of gifts on New Year's Day take place according to a strict protocol. In addition to elaborate festivities and tournaments and exchanging (and also rewarding) envoys, important family events, such as christenings and betrothals were held on this occasion. The New Year's Day of 1402 - 1403, according to our modern calendar - marked an especially important event: this was when Philip the Bold founded Burgundy's first order of chivalry, a political alliance and an interest group. Besides adding to the grandeur of the occasion, Margaret of Flanders' gift was meant to underscore the theme of the ceremony through its special depiction of the Calvary scene.

The identification of The Calvary of King Mattias Corvinus with the item listed in the inventory was an exceptional discovery. It was not just new information on an outstanding work of art, it thoroughly transformed earlier held views on goldsmith's work in Paris around 1400, an art which reached its zenith with the virtuoso technique known as émail en ronde bosse, by which email can be applied to rounded surfaces without the use of cells or hollowing out the base. The then known surviving pieces of this group were described by Erich Steingräber and Theodor Müller in the Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, 5, 1954, pp. 29-79, in a catalogue raisonné. In the years to come this provided the platform for a view that relied on the analysis of the existing works themselves to establish both the evolution of the technique and the chronology of its stylistic development. Accordingly, the most important point of reference was a charming grand joyau - "great jewelry" - meaning a jewel-like sumptuous ornamental piece that was not meant for personal adornment - which survived in Altötting in Bavaria. The identification of this item, known as The Goldenes Rössl, or Golden Horse, was a great scholarly accomplishment in the second half of the nineteenth century. The sources revealed that Isabeau of Bavaria had given it as a present to her husband, Charles VI of France in 1405. The date assigned to The Corvinus Calvary as the 1430s was primarily based on stylistic considerations: its mature and dramatic effects and the completely white enamel covering of the faces and the bodies were seen as the direct continuation of the more lyrical line represented by The Golden Horse.
The discovery of the artwork's description in an inventory dated 1402 shattered the earlier chronology. Scholars were surprised to learn that The Corvinus Calvary must have predated the Goldenes Rössl and, even more importantly, that the time difference was so small. On top of upsetting the established chronology, the discovery also administered the coup de grace to the illusion that a history of the ronde bosse technique, and of Paris goldsmith's work from around 1400 in general, could be written simply by analysing the stylistic marks of still-extant works. (This, I might add, applies to later periods as well.) This chronology failed to synchronise the abundant information retrieved from written sources, many of them published in the nineteenth century, with the surviving objects. By extending the scope of her study to these written sources, Éva Kovács abandoned the familiar course of earlier research.
The compelling cover of the book, together with the table of contents, immediately makes it clear that the author focuses on The Corvinus Calvary, and its top section in particular. This is both the point of departure and the final conclusion to which Éva Kovács was led by her research. Part One is a thorough description of the work, which covers every detail and technical aspect, including a definition of the composition's complex iconographic programme. After having traced The Corvinus Calvary to Philip the Bold, Éva Kovács sets out to draw up a chart, using a novel method of starting from a broad perspective and zooming onto The Corvinus Calvary again and again. In the first three chapters she discusses in detail the history, iconographic features and stylistic marks of the Esztergom Cross. Although strictly speaking it is not her subject, she does not shy away from addressing the relationship between the Gothic grand joyau and the Renaissance pedestal. The alternatives she puts forward in connection with the eight decades that are unaccounted for in the artwork's history are important precisely from the viewpoint of the latter. After the death of Philip the Bold, the grand jewel passed into the hands of the widow of one of his creditors, Pierre Varopel, in way of a settlement. At this point, however, the work disappears from sight, only to re-emerge in 1494, in the list of pledged items in connection with a transaction between János Corvinus (the illegitimate son of Matthias) and Tamás Bakócz. After further decades of obscurity, the "Opus regio" turns up again in the middle of the sixteenth century in an inventory of the Esztergom Cathedral Treasury, rarely displayed to outsiders. In the Appendix, the author lists the Hungarian sources related to the Esztergom Cross.

...
Focusing on The Corvinus Calvary from yet another angle, the author discusses the owners, the goldsmiths and the purveyors involved, based once again on a brilliant survey of the written sources. What at first sight seems to be no more than anecdotal information actually serves to reveal the splendour, the personal relations, the quarrels and the secret liaisons of prominent members of the House of Valois. From these bits and pieces, Éva Kovács can conclude with confidence that the French royal court, the courts of Charles V's brothers and their descendants, were all parts of a flourishing cultural mechanism with Paris as its centre and model. Charles V and his brothers, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, Louis of Orléans and Jean, duc de Berry, who was one of the greatest collectors of all times, were the main actors of this mechanism. Together with their extended families, they constituted a broad intellectual and courtly circle.
Once again, the historical sources provide the information which allows us to reconstruct the splendour of country life, with its insatiable demand for luxury items, including the place and role of goldsmiths' workshops. Éva Kovács provides compelling evidence for a predominance of artefacts that were not commissioned individually. This even applies to works decorated with personalised elements, such as the coat of arms or the badge of an aristocratic family. By defining the specific skills of the various subgroups of artisans, we can also establish the craftsman associated with proper art patronage. This approach will help us single out works with the best chance to be "individually" mentioned in documents: in uncovering their iconographic or heraldic programmes or hidden symbolism, we are able to associate them with a prominent event or a patron of the arts. The picture that gradually emerges reveals that in the creation and purveyance of goldsmiths' works the Lombards played a crucial role, those enterpreneurs, mostly from Northern Italy, who dealt with banking transactions and also traded in precious stones. In addition to the great host of Lombard merchants, there were the merchant-goldsmiths (marchand-mercier), who both produced and sold jewellery. They supplied tableware (vaiselle), and also produced and repaired it. Some of the prominent Paris goldsmiths worked for more than one court, although each of the leading craftsmen had a favourite "client". Éva Kovács draws important conclusions as regards the activities and spheres of influence of various goldsmiths' workshops. Her work, especially her findings about the "court goldsmiths", may also be of use to students of the ducal and royal courts, a field of study in the limelight recently. These craftsmen, who often rose to the rank of chamberlains, were mostly responsible for the repair and design, rather than the execution, of goldsmith's work. (Although we know of some cases where they undertook the entire job from start to finish.) Students of the early modern period can learn much from studying this mechanism: a well-defined structure emerged around the Valois courts, the direct descendants and various elements of which can be traced in Central European courts as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One such example is the luxury mechanism of the seven-teenth-century Principality of Transylvania, which, although clearly archaic and "patriarchal" at the time, was in many respects comparable to that of the Valois.

Reconstructing the web of the intricate networks, Éva Kovács reached the conclusion that by tracing the relations of the assumed original owner, Philip the Bold, with court goldsmiths, the circumstances might be revealed under which an artefact of unrivalled beauty even in its own age, The Calvary of King Mattias Corvinus, was created, and even the identity of its maker. This is the type of work detectives usually do: a relentless search for the motive. Without exploring these diverse paths, however obscure or far-fetched, Éva Kovács would never have arrived at the point where she could attempt an - admittedly hypothetical but now generally accepted - identification of The Corvinus Calvary's maker. This was a rare moment in the history of the profession, since a similar tour de force had earlier been achieved only once, when the marks on the Holy Thorn Reliquary of Rheims, one of the last masterpieces of this genre, were attributed to Guillaume Lemaistre, who joined the Paris guild in January, 1458.
In her attempt to identify the master craftsman who made the Esztergom piece, Éva Kovács had however only the sources to turn to. Which one of the period's goldsmiths had been experienced enough by 1402, sufficiently familiar with the monumental stone sculpture of Charles V's period, and able to apply the drama and pathos along with the conventions associated with André Beauneveu, the outstanding sculptor of the times? The craftsman in question must have mastered the complete range of technical skills of the given period, and must also have been quite close to the court of the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold. In search of the origins both of an iconography characteristic of a specific occasion and of the actual method, the émail en ronde-bosse, Éva Kovács furnishes evidence for links with miniature painting, a genre that also had its centre in Paris. This further narrowed the circle of goldsmiths who could have made The Corvinus Calvary.
The tireless study of the written documents, a process once compared by Éva Kovács to that of sifting through sand, eventually bore fruit. Among the names of numerous goldsmiths, she singled out a craftsman, who was known to work for Philip the Bold's court through an earlier commission. Hermann Ruissel was the maker of the Trois Frčres, a piece of jewellery of austere beauty only known from paintings and written documents, which was decorated with balas-ruby (a rose-coloured precious stone popular at the time), diamonds and pearls. Master Ruissel (also spelt Rinssel, Ruisseau) was a "trusted artist" of Philip the Bold, whose professional career closely matched the profile Éva Kovács drew during her research.

 

Erika Kiss
is the Curator of the History Department and the Silver and Jewellery Collections at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. She specialises in goldsmithry and has written extensively on this subject.