The Battle of Mohács between the Kingdom of Hungary and Ottoman Empire occurred 29th August 1526. The young King Louis II perished there, as well as many church officials, who had consolidated their position during his rule and went to...
moreThe Battle of Mohács between the Kingdom of Hungary and Ottoman Empire occurred 29th August 1526. The young King Louis II perished there, as well as many church officials, who had consolidated their position during his rule and went to the battle against fivefold stronger army on wish of the pope. Many noblemen perished there, too, some aristocratic families almost died off. The battle caused the end of the independence of the Kingdom of Hungary, the domestic candidate for Hungarian King Ján Zápoľský was not successful and Habsburgs took the throne for centuries.
The images of battle appeared within the interest for history during the Enlightenment as matter-of-fact illustrations (as e.g. the engraving from the end of 17th century by Pieter van den Bergen). The romantic artists began to approach the subject more original and personal. Influenced by the French Revolution they tried to recall the idea of liberty, to lash and motive people and to invoke patriotic and national emotions in them. It happened actually after the lost fights for the independence of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1848/49. Unless the victorious Austrian Kaiser Dom, its Vienna Art Academy, where most of the artists from the Kingdom of Hungary studied, was for such subjects not minded. That is why the first pictures with the Mohács theme originated in Paris. They were admired by French sympathizers and by emigrants – former revolutionaries from the Kingdom of Hungary. Such pictures could awake a fellowship with the ancient heroes, who were once able to make
a martyr of their selves or to bear the lot of the lost country. Moritz Than (1828 – 1899) from the village Bečej in Vojvodina (Serbia), lawyer and revolutionary in 1848/49, student of Vienna Art Academy, painted in Paris the picture Battle of Mohács (1856) – nowadays in the Town hall of Košice (Slovakia). It has a diagonal composition usual in the biblical scenes; in the center a man holding (Delacroix like) a flag depicted Holy
Maria – the patron of the Kingdom of Hungary. The man might be Laurent Nyári (because of his likeness in an other Than’s picture), who survived the battle. Two men with a cross on the chest, who laid their lives, are alongside him: Esztergom archbishop Ladislaus Szalkai and Kalocsa archbishop Paul Tomori. Right behind is the escaping King and left in front the attacking Turks. Than’s mastery lies in that he managed, thanks the posture of the central man, to give the scene of a defeat
an effect of a victory. His image resounded in domestic ambient through lithography (one made by Frederick Szlávi is in Museum of Rimavská Sobota). Victor Madarász (1830 – 1917) from the town Štítnik (Slovakia), also lawyer, revolutionary in 1848/49 and student of Vienna Art Academy, painted in Paris the legendary hero Michael Dobozi (1868). Dobozi together with his love Lina escaped horseback (in the picture Gericault like) and preferred the act of suicide to fallen in capture... as it
is found in Kisfaludy´s Legend from Hungarian Past. It is hardly to imagine, which emotions did such a picture invoked in the society of the former Hungarian Prime minister Bertalan Szemere (1812 – 1869) or of that time already deceased Hungarian government secretary the Earl Ladislaus Teleki (1811–1861). Their lives after the Világos capitulation were changed in an existence of the convicts in Paris banishment and the ends of their lives were similar tragic: Szemere was conquered by
an amentia and Teleki committed suicide. By Turks followed Dobozi occurs in one wood engraving from 1865 made by the representatives of the younger generation – Henry Knöfler and Bertalan Székely (1835 – 1910) from Cluj (Romania). Székely was also student of Vienna Art
Academy, but he matured in Munich, in the second center of European historical painting. He was there a pupil of Carl Theodor von Piloty. His image of Dobozi from 1861 should be rather a Hungarian contribution to European historical painting as “an exilic cry“. It tried to explore the painting possibilities in the contemporary processes, which needed “attacks” on national and patriotic feeling.
The period after the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise in 1867 brought the first official orders for depictions the historical events in order to support the state identity. One order was entrusted in the hands of our portraitist and genre painter Jozef Hanula (1863 – 1944) from Liptovské Sliače (Slovakia). The story of his picture Tomori´s Death, which he painted as a student of Munich Art Academy, does not have its disentanglement till nowadays. It was ordered for the Millennium Exhibition 1897 by Hanula’s maecenas – Kalocsa archbishop Juraj Čáska from Nitrianska Streda (Slovakia), who supposed to remind the heroism of his predecessor in the time the Hungarian Catholic church tried to obtain its autonomy. According a letter Hanula sent to the exhibition only a sketching picture (three such pictures are in Slovak National Gallery of Bratislava, one in Spiš Gallery of Spišská Nová Ves). The final work he had not finished because of a disease. It is not known, if he did it later and if yes, where the picture is.
The pictures with the subject of historical unexplained death of the King Louis II generate an extra case. The base for the depicting of his death by drowning was the report of King’s pantry man Aldrich Cetrik to the widowed Queen Maria. Cetrik together with him escaped from the battlefield and sow the King felt down from the horse in a stream and drowned. The pope nuncius in the Kingdom of Hungary Antonio Giovanni Burgio († 1538) mentioned this in a letter to the pope. The humanist
Miklós Istvánffy took it over into his Historiarum de rebus Ungaricis libri XXXIV (1622), what was probably the source for the picture The Death of King Louis II, painted by Stephan Dorffmaister in 1795 – 1796 for the monastery St. Gothard (nowadays in Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest). The King´s death is similarly dealt in a Prague lithography – made by Karl August Ferdinand Hennig (1794 – 1862) and published by Gottlieb Haase (1765 – 1824) – from the Slovak National Museum of Martin as well as from the SAS Central Bibliotheca of Bratislava. It belongs to the pioneer cycle of Czech historical painting, realized from the year 1820 in collaboration of the museum librarian Václav Hanka (1791 – 1861). From artistic point of view, it shows some theatrical character, copying the French “scenography” and details without historical authenticity.
The descriptions of the King’s death from the Turkish annals, offering a variant the King was hurt and his headless body ended in a lake, did not find any image expression. Even any image is known with the King in moment he was killed, as it is mentioned in the reports of Venetian spies and then in the chronicles, one of the Buda court chaplain Juraj Sriemsky (1490 – 1548) and another one of Conrad Sperfogl (1515 – 1538) from Levoča (Slovakia). Juraj Zápoľský was suspicious from this murder; he had an inducement motif to help his brother Ján to reach the crown.
The next subject concerns the recovery of the dead King. Two pictures can show differences between Budapest and Vienna point of view. The impressive romantic picture painted by Bertalan Székely in Munich 1860 is well known. It came from the legend about a miracle, when the dead King was found intact (as if alive) after he lied in a provisional grave near Mohács more than one month. The prime mover of this legend seems to be the captain Francis Sárffy. He informed the bishop Brodarič, who put it in his book De conflictu Hungarorum... (Cracow, 1527). The subject was elaborated also in 1869, this time by Bratislava painter Eduard Majsch (1841 – 1904). As a student of Vienna Art Academy he – opposite to Székely – adhered only the general known fact, that the King died in the battle of Mohács: the dead King is shown in arm of his pantry
man Aldrich Cetrik in composition of a Pieta, what evoke a respect, which every ruler fallen in a battle merit. The King is ordinary dressed and with a sword in the hand (!) to be clear, that he died in the battlefield. Majsch involved its tenebrous atmosphere with a blear sky and flying crows. He added only a light streak in horizon, maybe to symbolize a hope on “better time”, which the Habsburgs gave the country in that time as well as in time of the picture origin.
Romantic painters of the Kingdom of Hungary were interested also in the story of Dorota Perényi, neé Kanižai. Only she had the courage to went at the battlefield in order to let burry more than 20 000 fallen fighters, among them her step-son Várad bishop Francis Perényi. This woman standing high-spirited during the burial act was depicted by Mihály Kovács (1854), Soma Orlai Petrich (60´s of 19th century) and Béla Vi(s)zkelety (before 1864). The lithography from the Museum of
Rimavská Sobota (Slovakia) made by William Grund according the picture Béla Vi(s)zkelety (1825 – 1864) has apparently in error the title Helen Perényi, although no Helen/Ilona is known from the family genealogy. The lithography was a premium for ladies taking the fashion journal Pest Lady. Maybe it should remind them to carry moreover on the cultivating the patriotism and duty to motherland as their forerunners did. Such pathetic and sententious contexts seem to be one of the significant feature common for nearby all mentioned pictures. These pictures originated within the frame of historicist academism and
through its involvement for justice they became an important component of the contemporary course of events. So these can
play a role of the speakers who help us to explain the thinking of our ancestors and to guide though the world they lived in. We can say this in spite of its distance from “historical truth” and presumable distance from „Slovak context“.
