Sigismund's Moment in Art History

 

The historical personage invoked by the title of this exhibition, and in its attendant publications, would never have inscribed himself as rex et imperator, and anyone who did so would have been certain to find themselves out of his favour. (This in spite of the fact that, in line with the provisions of the German Golden Bull issued by his father in 1356, he would have been able to speak Latin, German, Italian and Czech.) The curators of the Charles IV exhibition (Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347–1437), held partly in conjunction with this exhibition, first in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, then in Prague, were nearer to the truth when they plumped for the title of "emperor by the grace of God". Neither designation, however, includes the listing—ever-present in medieval documents and royal seals—of all the countries over which the person in question ruled as prince, king or emperor. The appearance is given that one of the two (the father) ruled over Bohemia, the other over Hungary; in both cases, however, they did so merely as kings. As emperors, both were the crowned heads of "the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation", and prior to that bore the title of German King. Both of them, in the 19th century (when Czechs and Hungarians were incorporated in the Habsburgs' Austrian empire), became "our" emperor in both Bohemia and Hungary. The "rex et imperator" is completely the reverse order to that demanded by medieval protocol and this reversal is, to Hungarians, evidence that it is the Latinization of a familiar line in the historical ballad "Szibinyáni Jank" that the poet János Arany wrote in 1855 ("Sigismund, king and emperor...").
Thus, summoning up a bygone age with even the slightest pretensions to historical authenticity is no easy matter these days, given that even the manner in which one designates the protagonist is open to dispute. The exhibition's principal aim, which is to present the art and culture of that age in such a way as to make its relevance clearer to us today, seems a simpler task. (Simpler, even if one is well aware that, in Sigismund's time, people would have had a very different understanding of the concepts of king or emperor, presuming that the titles meant anything to them.)
The exhibition is taking on the seemingly even more hopeless task of attempting to bring the culture of a submerged era closer to a modern-day "educated public" by drawing attention to its relics. This first presentation of the material remains of the period when Sigismund ruled over Hungary aims to awaken both the Hungarian and a wider international public to the fact that the cultural heritage of Hungary, blank spot that it may seem from a distance, also makes a significant contribution alongside the English, French (specifically, in Paris, in the ducal courts of Burgundy, Berry and Anjou) and Bohemian court art of the years around 1400, which has featured strongly in recent years. A splendid ambition it is, too, for a member nation of the European Union to wish to make its historical heritage common property. Yet if the domain of this presentation is art history, its goal must necessarily be to display some characteristic aspect and, possibly, to demonstrate a prosperity that set out from somewhere in Hungary to impinge upon European culture as a whole. Obviously, the point of such an undertaking would be to justify a claim that the half century between 1387 and 1437 in which Sigismund ruled as king of Hungary (and from 1411 as elected and, from 1414, as crowned German king, then from 1420 as king of Bohemia, and from 1433, as Holy Roman Emperor) was accompanied by a major turn in art history, a shift towards the art of the modern age—our own culture. This would be a shift comparable in significance to, for instance, the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance, or the emergence of painting in the Low Countries, or French court culture in the International Gothic style. Given our current knowledge, the timing of such turning points cannot, as a rule, be precisely defined. If hopes are held out for a shift of such major dimensions during Sigismund's fifty years on the Hungarian throne, we should not expect to be unable to pinpoint that accurately. Given that he himself was not a creative artist and that his unselfish patronage of the arts is disputed, it is therefore only possible to speak about "Sigismund's hour" or "moment" in a metaphorical, even journalistic, sense. Still, it is not uninteresting to ask about the timing of a process that saw the emergence of modern traits, including a demand that works of art should have an individual mode of expression.
We are accustomed to using stories to tell about processes and turning points, their antecedents and their consequences. Art history is just as much about the telling of stories as history itself, only whereas the subject of the latter is more or less determined (crudely: "man"), that of the former is illusory, artificial: "art".
Yet, this is the narrative to which we relate our impressions concerning works of art, locating them within it as best we can, or adjusting it to fit them. The intention behind an exhibition such as this, with its ambition to explore and familiarise, is nothing less than a revision of art history's "European" or "universal" "grand narrative". This grand narrative's equivalents and parts are the small ones: the separate stories about individual works. There are as many of them as there are observers and narrators. These narratives may rank among the art historian's most warily guarded secrets, not to be uttered, much like the name of a divinity or a magic spell, but they exist nonetheless. In reality, every story of origins attempts to account for how what we see and what we strive to explain came into being. Here I shall try to tell a few parallel stories about a single work of art from the Sigismund period, a work that is also one of the most important relics of medieval Hungarian art: the silver reliquary bust, or herm, of Saint Ladislas, undoubtedly one of the least damaged of surviving early 15th century works of art.
Furthermore, the general impression it creates has hardly altered, due to its considerable precious metal content. Those who have the chance to see it from close up, as do visitors to these Sigismund exhibitions of 2006, will find it hard to resist the effect it has. They will be able to delude themselves that they have gained a direct insight into time itself, into a distant past.

...

Acurrent appraisal of the place of the St Ladislas reliquary in art history may be set on two footings. One of these was elaborated by Éva Kovács, one of the principal specialists on the Hungarian Middle Ages, most notably the history of its court art. She died in 1998 without having put together (some shorter essays and catalogue entries aside) her thoughts on the work. She had a very thorough grasp of medieval figural reliquaries, and she placed the St Ladislas herm within a series of majestic large-scale reliquary busts headed by the one that Philip IV (Le Bel) had made for the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and which was destroyed at the time of the French Revolution. This, with its at once hieratic and—as the bust form in itself underlines—life-like appearance and its heraldically ornamented, enamelled bust, was also a model for the reliquary for Charlemagne's skull that the Emperor Charles IV commissioned for the Minster at Aix-la-Chapelle. Éva Kovács also developed a theory for the artistic source of the enamel ornamentation of the St Ladislas herm. The filigree enamel technique was undeniably fully established well into the 15th and the 16th centuries, and in those areas of Central Europe across which it was distributed it was often referred to as the Hungarian style of decoration. Supplanting the plethora of conjecture about Byzantine, Venetian and Northern Italian roots proposed by scholars ever since they began writing about the history of the applied arts in Hungary, Éva Kovács stressed the links with goldsmith techniques for luxury and other objects produced for the French court.
The plates of enamel sprinkled with golden stars or dots that are characteristic of the bust of the St Ladislas herm are a style of decoration that is particularly close to the French émail plique-a-jour. This is typical of early filigree enamel, and most assuredly of the scabbard of the ceremonial sword that Sigismund bestowed on Friedrich der Streitbare, Elector of Saxony, in 1425, and also of the chalice that Benedek Suki donated to the cathedral of Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia) around 1440 which is now in the Treasury of Esztergom Cathedral.
The Sigismund exhibition in Budapest offers an opportunity not least to make comparisons of some major filigree enamel relics. These include the splendid Visconti chalice from Monza and the enamelled chalice from Pozsony Cathedral (Bratislava) that, albeit not filigree, is likewise ornamented with sprinklings of stars. Then there is a 15th-century gospel book from Nyitra Cathedral (Nitra) with the goldsmiths' work of the cover incorporating a relic of the True Cross, along with filigree enamel medallions and symbols of the Evangelists, counterparts to which may be seen on a standing crucifix from Nagydisznód/Heltau in Transylvania (Cisna˘die). These data and links in themselves show that the filigree enamel technique cannot be considered as being Transylvanian in origin, its broad diffusion pointing more to the role of a court centre.

The other mainstay for a modern-day appraisal of the St Ladislas herm is a group of statues that were discovered in Buda Castle in 1974, which have proved decisive in recognizing the character and European significance of art during the reign of Sigismund. Without them, for any ideas about court culture in that age we would have to have recourse, even today, to dubious conclusions and vague conjectures drawn from sporadic remains. The clarification of the status of the statue find necessitated the mounting of the first exhibition devoted to the art of the Sigismund era at the Budapest Historical Museum in 1987. Under the circumstances of that time, all that could be accomplished was to bring together the body of material that, for the most part, was accessible in Hungary alone, while flagging international connections in a catalogue that was assembled almost along the lines of a wish list.
Those wishes—and, thanks to more recent research, many more in addition— have now been granted in this 2006 exhibition. Foremost among them is a confrontation with the relics of that era and a claim to reconstruct the artistic context. A consensus may have emerged regarding the stylistic roots and antecedents of the Sigismund-era Buda statues, but assessments of their chronology, and hence their significance for the history of style, differ widely (extending from the 1390s to the 1420s). What is not disputed, however, is the marks left on the statues by the handiwork of a group of master craftsmen who worked on the ornamentation of St Stephen's cathedral in Vienna. The influence can also be demonstrated on a group of statues that came from Grosslobming in Austria—that is, the Paris style of the 14th century—and perhaps even as late as around 1400. It is likely that others were influenced by André Beauneveu's style in particular, as transmitted via Brabant and Cologne. Today we recognize this sculptural style as a Central European parallel and alternative to the Bohemian Beautiful Style of around 1400 that, guided by modern stylistic prototypes, superseded the sculptural work of the mason Peter Parler, who flourished in Prague during the reign of Charles IV. Today, what seems to be one of the most characteristic aspects of the Sigismund-era Buda statues, and an aspect pointing to the future, towards 15thcentury realism (both in the Low Countries and Italian) that supplanted the Soft Style, is their aspiration to vitality. That aim is expressed through a formula applied to descriptions of antique monuments: they were but a hair's breadth away from not just looking alive but actually coming to life. This placing of such high store on vitality was one of the central elements of the early humanist ecphrasis, or characterization, of which Pier Paolo Vergerio was the master. Active earlier at the court of the Carraras in Padua, Vergerio entered Sigismund's service at the time of the Council of Constance. He spent the remaining years of his life in Hungary. The vehicle of that vitality on the Sigismund-era Buda statues is the portrayal of the mouth as half-open, as though just about to speak; this was an important device for conveying pathos in art around 1400, from the heads of Christ of Bohemian Pietas in the Beautiful Style to the paintings of Pisanello. It is found within the area of influence of Buda sculpture, including a head fragment from a group of red marble royal sepulchral monuments found at Bogovác in Bosnia that in all probability were carved in Hungary; it is present in the head of a centurion in a 1427 altarpiece of the Crucifixion painted by Thomas de Coloswar for Garamszentbenedek in Upper Hungary (Hronsky´ Ben·adik); it also plays a part in portraits of Sigismund himself (one in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). This is the element that endows the Győr herm of St Ladislas, for all its stiff calm and hieratic symmetry, with the appearance of a living presence.
In the catalogue of this Budapest exhibition, the Sigismundian Buda statues are dated "between 1400–1420", which corresponds to the period when building work on the palace may well have been going on. Eberhard Windecke, Sigismund's biographer, recalls the extensive work that was undertaken in connection with his return from the Council of Constance in 1419. The great hall of the palace, built at the time, is mentioned as the venue for events at which, among others, the Byzantine emperor and King Eric of Denmark were present in 1424. In that same period, on land between the palace and the city of Buda, St Sigismund's church was built as a royal chapel. Excavations showed that the same craftsmen worked on the sculptural ornamentation. The Győr herm of St Ladislas is dated in the catalogue as "after 1406". One other work of essentially the same date features here: a skull reliquary of "after 1400" from Trencsén (Trencín) that is now held by the Hungarian National Museum. There has been much speculation about the function and artistic connections of this reliquary and its portrayal of an unidentified bearded saint (including the role claimed for it as a reliquary of St Ladislas). All that can be said with certainty is that it differs stylistically from the Győr herm in being the work of an earlier generation of artists, most likely from around 1380.
We also encounter this same problem of a dating that falls between the Angevin age and the early Sigismund age within the St Ladislas herm itself, for the head part of this bust that is definitely of the Sigismund age conceals an inner silver reliquary, which certainly had to have been produced earlier than the head accommodating it, as the internal structure of the latter provides a perfect fit. The setting for the silver reliquary bust is, in point of fact, of an elliptical silver case for the skull. Its lower closing plate is provided with a lug that allowed the relic to be taken out and, most probably, displayed (for a kiss or touch or the taking of an oath). Intersecting bands affixed with hinges encased the upper perimeter. The engraved and enamelled decoration of the bands includes a central medallion containing the enthroned Maiestas domini. On the stems, enclosed in foiled frames, are the zoomorphic symbols of the evangelists with scrolls bearing their names. The catalogue denotes this mounting, differing in style from the external bust of St Ladislas, as being 14th-century work from the Angevin age. The affinity of technique and style to that of Angevin goldsmiths is unquestionable, yet that does not mean it could not have been produced in the early 15th century, immediately after the Nagyvárad fire: one thing that is obvious about the first two decades of Sigismund's reign—above all his seals, given that the moulds for these would have been produced by the court goldsmiths—is the continuity of artistic practice from the preceding era. More recent research has produced many reasons arguing for an artistic continuity between the age of Louis the Great and the early Sigismund years as regards architecture and sculpted architectural ornamentation.

My own take on the history may be outlined as follows. The St Ladislas reliquary, on which a good number of dissatisfied barons who rebelled against Sigismund in 1403 swore an oath of allegiance to King Ladislas of Naples, who had landed in Dalmatia in pursuit of his claim to the Hungarian throne, perished in a fire at Nagyvárad prior to 1406. We do not know if this conflagration in the sacristy had anything to do with the rebellion and Sigismund's reprisals, or possibly even (given that the archive also burned down) with removing any traces of these. At all events, in 1406 Sigismund conducted an inspection of the scene, and he showed his attachment to St Ladislas, whom he esteemed as a paragon of chivalry, by designating the cathedral as his own burial place. This is likely to have been when the inner case for the relics was created, while the reliquary bust would only have been made a good deal later, not earlier than about 1420, during the construction work at Buda and the most intensive period of its sculptural ornamentation. This is the second phase of art at Sigismund's court, in which what Sigismund experienced in his extended journeying abroad (from 1412 to 1419) undoubtedly played a role.
Elected German king in 1411, Sigismund's absence began in 1412 with stays in northern Italy and the southern Tyrol that were connected with his campaign against Venice, and continued with the negotiations that he conducted in Lombardy to prepare the way for the Council of Constance, then his coronation in Aix-la-Chapelle at the end of 1414. When the Council of Constance was in session, Sigismund went off from 1415 onwards, first of all on a long trip to Perpignan that was aimed at healing the Papal Schism, then in 1416, after the battle of Agincourt, on an attempt to conciliate France and England. In 1419, on his way back home from the Council, he marched through southern German cities on the banks of the Danube.
A great many things were held against Sigismund: his frivolity, his fickleness, his political intrigues and his improvidence. Only comparatively recently has it become quite clear how personally, and with evident relish, he threw himself into his artistic enterprises. There can be little doubt that in this respect he is one of the very first of a new type of patron, one typical of the modern age. In the course of his travels, he acquired drawings first in Siena and later in Avignon, of the Papal Palace—plainly to be used as models for his own subsequent buildings. Wherever he went, he employed local craftsmen and artists; in Cologne, and later in the string of southern German cities that he visited, he engaged builders. Both those in his entourage and local chroniclers relate that in Paris he likewise engaged many artisans, especially masons and goldsmiths; this has particular relevance in view of the construction work in Buda and its sculptural ornamentation, as well as for the luxury articles produced at the court. The aim in both cases was patently ostentation worthy of an emperor. It is most likely that Paris is where Arnold van Boemel from s'Hertogenbosch was active, from whom Sigismund, in Constance in 1417, commissioned - with a very precise description of his requirements - his imperial seal, clearly hoping that he would soon need it (in reality he was not able to make any use of it before his coronation in Rome in 1433).
The image and inscriptions on that seal bear witness to a serious and genuine sense of duty. The visual devices and public gestures of the exercise of power were always means to express a ruler's sense of duty and his perception of power; it seems Sigismund readily availed himself of these and had a feel for applying them in innovative ways. The insignia and reliquaries of the Holy Roman Empire had long been considered a patrimony all the way back to Charlemagne; so their transfer in 1420, at the time of his coronation, from a Prague then in revolt, to Visegrád on the Danube in Hungary after the fall of Vys·ehrad, and from there to Buda in 1424, and their eventual safekeeping in Nuremberg were political gestures of this type. This gave expression to the importance of Buda as a seat, but it also expressed the German king's growing mistrust of the reigning princes of the German lands and his trust in the imperial cities at the time of the Hussite wars. Nuremberg's patriciate had proved themselves to be reliable supporters of Sigismund's economic and urban policies in Hungary from the first decade of the 15th century onwards. A pamphlet known as Reformatio Sigismundi, produced not long after Sigismund's death and circulated in printed form for a long time thereafter, regarded his curbs on ecclesiastical and secular princes and the greater role that he gave to the imperial cities (ideas inspired by a dream, according to the author) as being the emperor's principal legacy and the guarantee of peace in the future.

 

Ernő Marosi
is Fellow of the Institute of Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Professor in the Art History Department of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, acting as vice president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has published numerous books and studies on Romanesque and Gothic architecture and sculpture, and medieval art in general, including the catalogue of the first Sigismund exhibition at the Budapest History Museum in 1987.