János Végh

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The Esterházy family's renown was fostered by their strange rise to power. Count Nicholas I. Esterházy (1583-1645), the founder of their wealth and subsequent prestige, was born into an average family of the middle nobility, but within a remarkably short period attained the highest secular office in Hungary, that of nádor, or Palatine. He thus became the Habsburgs' representative, the medium of their will at national assemblies and hence of their authority in the country as a whole; equally he relayed and represented the wishes of the population vis-à-vis their king. (On paper it should have been the ruler who appointed the Palatine, his most trusted man, but in that era the Hungarian nobility won the right to elect him through a vote in the Diet, so the ruler only endorsed that election by his formal appointment of that person.) The future Palatine laid the foundation for his dizzying rise in the world by converting to Catholicism at the age of seventeen. That step, which must be ascribed to his own deeply felt convictions and which clearly owed much to his education at a Jesuit college, aroused general outrage among his predominantly Protestant fellow noblemen, and he was even disowned by his father, who barred him from his house. Instead, he became the protégé of a highly placed uncle on his mother's side, accompanying him on two campaigns against the Turks. Then, with a favourable reputation reinforced by the bravery he had displayed on the battlefield, he offered his services to the constable of Kassa (Kosîce in Slovakia), the military commander of extensive territories in eastern Hungary. To win acceptance for himself in that Protestant environment must have called for considerable diplomatic skills. He was so successful that he became the constable's deputy and after his death married the childless and immensely rich widow. He thus became the lord of substantial estates, and his elevation was completed by the Habsburg ruler bestowing on him the rank of baron. In the years to follow he was employed by the ruler in various confidential, what might be called diplomatic, negotiations, which further boosted his authority both inside and outside Hungary. After losing his wife, he contracted a second advantageous marriage, and it is worth noting here that both his wives turned Catholic before the wedding, obviously at his prompting. (Esterházy seems to have followed the much-admired practice by which the Habsburgs acquired their domains in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as reflected in a contemporary bon mot: Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube, or "Others make war, you, Happy Austria, marry!")
The Esterházys, in keeping with their wealth, made considerable material sacrifices in carrying on the struggle against the Ottoman empire, and on more than a few occasions personally took part in the fighting. One sad outcome of the Battle of Vezekény (Vel'ky Vozokány, Slovakia), which took place in late November 1652, was the death of no less than four male members of the family, including its head, Ladislaus. Esterházys regularly attained high public office (on one further occasion as nádor) and took part in diplomatic missions. For those services they usually earned the gratitude of the Habsburg ruler of the day, sometimes sweetened with a gift or special favour (including the opportunity to purchase goldsmiths' work that had passed to the imperial treasury as the property confiscated from another Hungarian aristocrat who had been executed for treason). Imperial favour culminated in the bestowal of the title of prince in 1687. As far as their subsequent patronage of the arts goes, let it suffice here to note that they built magnificent palaces at Kismarton (Eisenstadt, Austria) and Eszterháza (today's Fertôd), where Joseph Haydn was their kapellmeister and composer for three decades, and that the greater part of the Old Master collection of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts was purchased from the family by the Hungarian state.

It follows from the subject of the exhibition under review that we shall be concerned primarily with the early phases of the Esterházys' patronage of the arts dominated by the acquisition of treasures. The uncertainties of seventeenthcentury conditions that otherwise smiled so beneficently on the family, the fickleness of the fortunes of war, the permanent threat that hostile forces might unexpectedly appear at almost any moment, all these spurred people to invest the greater part of their wealth in easily transportable precious metals. Better-off peasants might sew rows of silver buttons on their clothing, whereas aristocrats endeavoured to amass as much silver, gold and jewels as possible, and then employed goldsmiths to enhance their value. These items might be complemented by the reverently preserved personal possessions of distinguished members of a family-decorations, items of clothing or weapons, for example. (Among the decorations on display in this exhibition is a Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, bestowed by Queen Victoria on Prince Paul III Anton Esterházy (1786-1866) in 1837 for his services as ambassador to the court of St James.)
The Esterházy Treasury-the private collection of the Old Forchtenstein Line, amassed by Nicholas I and Prince Paul (1635-1713)-was located in what was considered the invincible fortress of Fraknó (Forchtenstein, Austria). A few items would be brought out for display there at sessions of the Palatine's council, while for the national Diet or a coronation the more sumptuous pieces would be carried with them. All of this helped to burnish the family's reputation still further. The collection was housed for almost three hundred years, from the 1630s to the 1930s, in Fraknó Castle. Their splendid isolation from the outside world came to an end when the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy found itself on the losing side in the First World War. Anticipating occupation of parts of the Monarchy by the armed forces of the successor states, many aristocrats, including the Esterházys, had their treasures and at least important parts of their less transportable family archives transferred to Budapest. Between the two world wars those treasures were exhibited in the Museum of Applied Arts. At the end of the Second World War, with the Red Army approaching, the family saw fit to have the treasures removed to the former royal palace in Buda Castle, where they were stored in a cellar. The building was destroyed by a direct hit, with the collapsing masonry crushing the crates in which the treasures had been stored-irretrievably so, it was supposed, until they finally came to light several years later. That was certainly true for many of the textile, glass and ivory objects, but thanks to the skills of one particularly gifted restorer at the Museum of Applied Arts and his pupils, many of the gold and silver items have proved salvageable.
This exhibition could only have been mounted, then, thanks to this restoration work and the now very close ties with Austria. In moving the treasures to presumed safety during the summer of 1918, a smaller, but far from insignificant, portion stayed in Austria, where it now forms part of the property of the Esterházy Privatstiftung in Eisenstadt, one of the private trusts managed today by the Esterházy Betriebe GesmbH. Some of these items have been brought over to be reunited for a few months with the other parts of the fabulous collection for this show, curated by András Szilágyi¹, a specialist on the Esterházy Treasury and on the Esterházys.

In the first of the galleries, immediately to both left and right, are displayed two ornamental cups, the work of Hans Petzold, a highly esteemed master goldsmith of sixteenth-century Nurenberg. One of these is made from an unusually large piece of pearly turban shell, so contemporaries would have classified the artefact as naturalia. On its lid is portrayed a woman looking at herself in a mirror, which some suggest depicts the allegorical figure of Prudentia, the Christian virtue of circumspection, though other interpreters have suggested it is more likely to be Cleopatra marvelling at the beauty for which she was famed. In the case of the other cup the beholder is simply overtaken by wonder at the craftsmanship, making it a good representative of artificialia. Some of the tiny decorative elements are attached so delicately that they shiver and glitter inside the display case simply because of the vibrations in the floor as one approaches to take a closer look. Hence, the goldsmith has been able to give the impression that the object has a life of its own, moving and shifting without anyone so much as touching it. The left side of the gallery is dominated by an enormous, 78 cm-high silver-gilt goblet called the Matthias Corvinus Cup, which, so tradition has it, was once the property of Hungary's legendary king of the late Middle Ages. (The Esterházys were of course eager to own any object, regardless of quality, that was traceable to Matthias or any other historical personage. Nowadays researchers take such attributions with a large pinch of salt unless there is the evidence of contemporary inventories to back them up.) Its unusual size, atypical of the ornamental pieces that Matthias is known to have commissioned, might be explained if the king, or some other dignitary, intended it as a centrepiece on the high table of a banqueting hall.
On display elsewhere in the exhibition is an authentic Matthias relic: a lidded ornamental cup with which a mission from the German Imperial Diet sought to bring the Hungarian king around to their way of thinking during negotiations that were in progress during 1481. Although this, too, was fashioned in Nuremberg, there is little doubt that it was made for Matthias as, most unusually for that period, on the handle of its lid was placed the device of a raven, which was Matthias's heraldic animal. There is also a cup from another Hungarian king- John I Zápolya-the main interest of which is that the vessel was formed by hollowing and polishing a single block of the semi-precious, enigmatically bluishgreen- tinted gemstone called chrysophrase. It was presented by the Hungarian delegation attending the wedding in Cracow of the King of Poland's daughter to the heir to the Margrave of Brandenburg. (The Princess was King John's niece.) Until the early seventeenth century this cup was kept in the Berlin palace of the Electors of Brandenburg, when it came within the purview of the Esterházys and was acquired by them in view of its personal associations with the last non- Habsburg king of Hungary. It is obviously for much the same sort of Hungarian associations that a miniature wax relief portraying King Stephen Báthory of Poland, with its case, was acquired. King Stephen had been Prince of Transylvania before being invited to ascend the Polish throne. His person thus intimated the prospect of a Hungarian-Polish alliance against both the Habsburgs and the Turks-a hope that he was unable to fulfil during his short reign.
The centre of the gallery is occupied by a vast rug decorated with appliqué figurative elements of materials that include gilt leather. Depicting the court entourage of a Persian shah at an open-air festivity, this unique and magnificent carpet has featured in a number of countries as a star piece in exhibitions of Persian art. Around it are several examples of Turkish weaponry, including ceremonial swords, daggers and a mace, as well as a hand mirror. Their hilts and scabbards are silver gilt and encrusted with turquoises, rubies and even emeralds. There are bow and arrow quivers with red velvet coverings embroidered with silver and gold thread. The flat footrests of a pair of ornamental stirrups are an indication that the horseman would have worn soft-soled riding boots. As with the weapons, the Turkish goldsmith or blacksmith who made these stirrups dutifully supplied the work with his insignia, while a second stamped mark refers to the reigning sultan-a calligraphic marvel of superbly stylised Arabic script that sadly, due to its diminutive size, is all too rarely available for study. Also on display in this room are a few examples of seventeenth-century Hungarian gala dress, which at the time occasionally followed Turkish patterns. (The finest examples are to be seen in the adjoining gallery.) Some are made of Turkish brocade, others of Italian materials, but the needlework in all cases shows clear signs of having been done in Hungary. Some items, though perhaps surprisingly few, were designed for wear by women and children. As far as the ceremonial saddles and saddle-cloths go, only the occasional one is of Turkish origin, though there are signs that these were the favoured models, even for the pieces made in Spain. These are articles that would have come into the hands of aristocratic families either as booty or as a gift received in the course of a diplomatic mission, but they might equally have simply been purchased from some merchant.
Of special Turkish reference is the Vezekény platter, almost a metre in diameter and in silver relief; it displays the death in battle of Count Ladislas Esterházy and is a masterpiece by Philipp Jakob Drentwett of Augsburg. (Since it has a rim, it is a platter, but was obviously not for use.) It was either placed against a wall or passed from hand to hand to be examined so as to allow reflection on how fate unexpectedly struck down the heir to a huge fortune, or on the heroism of the family or even, perhaps, on the excellence of its maker.

Hanging behind the Persian rug, and also scattered around in other rooms, are enormous family portraits, over two metres high-fitting items for a gallery of Baroque forebears. The finest of these is by the German painter Benjamin von Block (1631-1689), being much more modern in its concept and execution than the rather dull, glowering full-length figures that typically came from the brushes of local Hungarian painters of that time. Several Esterházys not shown in original portraits from the Ancestral Gallery can at least be seen in considerably enlarged photographs of etchings. The portraits are not all of family members but include a number of contemporaries, grouped respectively under the headings "Benefactors and Supporters" and "Rivals and Enemies", though that classification is missing when it comes to foreigners. (Just to read the list of names, with a fleeting reminder of who they were, is of great help in getting away from the idea that we are just looking at art objects, or thinking only of the Esterházy family.) One of the portraits of foreigners that catches the eye is of Elizabeth (the Winter Queen, 1596-1662), the daughter of King James I of England and wife of Frederick V, the Elector Palatine and, briefly, on election by the country's Protestant estates, King of Bohemia at the start of the Thirty Years War. (He was an ally of the Prince of Transylvania in the military campaign against the Habsburgs). It was she who gave the cup depicting Prudentia to the daughter of a Hungarian magnate, from whom the Esterházys inherited it.
Many of the pieces on show attest to the Counter-Reformation spirit that permeated the Esterházys' Roman Catholicism. Some of these items-chalices, candlesticks, the infula from a bishop's mitre, small wooden and ivory figurines- come from the fittings of the chapel at Fraknó Castle. Others are smaller items that are evidence of the piety of individual family members, such as rosaries, rings decorated with religious motifs, cross-shaped clocks, which link the passage of time to the idea of salvation, or a strange 137 cm-high goldsmith's model of one of the Our Lady columns erected in the main squares of many Catholic towns and cities, including Vienna and Munich, during the seventeenth century.
There is also a long list of opulent accessories involved in the lifestyle of high aristocracy-strange figural table centrepieces, in several cases incorporating an interesting formation from the naturalia that were in such vogue (one instance being the figure of an ostrich, the body of which is formed of an actual ostrich egg), in other cases artificialia such as a carriage of Bacchus capable of propelling itself on a tabletop. The material that makes up many ceremonial banqueting vessels is their main point of interest, with items on display here being of ivory, the pearly shell of the nautilus, amethyst and many examples of rock crystal, including a number from the Prague workshop of the precious stone-cutter Ottavio Miseroni, who also pioneered glass engraving. Besides these there are condiment pots, ornamental cups, mirrors, table games and a startling diversity of jewellery for men as well as women. Of particular importance are several designs for jewels, previously unknown to scholars, which have been loaned from the Esterházy material held by the Hungarian National Archive and are on show here for the first time. Detailed publication of these has yet to come, but one can hope that this will be able to address the obvious question of whether the designs were produced under Esterházy commission in Augsburg, the leading European centre for goldsmiths at the time, or were designs created by an Augsburg goldsmith in the hope of winning an order.

¹ He was also responsible for the exhibition and catalogue of the Gilbert Collection at Somerset House, London: Hungary's Heritage: Princely Treasures from the Esterházy Collection, 2004.

János Végh
is Professor of Art History at the Academy of Applied Arts, Budapest. His books include: Fifteenth-Century German and Bohemian Panel Paintings in Hungarian Museums (1967), Sixteenth-Century German Paintings in Hungarian Museums (1972), Early Netherlands Paintings (1977), all from Corvina Press, Budapest, and also in English.