Room 4 / Villages and towns in the late 15th century – early 16th century
In this room visitors may follow the changes in the country's settlement network and people's way of life through the objects that survived from the everyday life of villages and towns. The heating of rural dwellings has become more economical and comfortable, as shown by the spread of stoves. More and more liturgical objects were produced for the churches of the urban bourgeoisie during this period, and the typical Hungarian techniques of wire enamel cloisonné and filigree decoration were also emerging.
Fun facts:
- In the 15th century, a change occurred in the village housing culture of the central lowland regions of the country: the oven heated from the base of the chimney appeared, which characterised the folk architecture of this region until the end of the 19th century.
- The Bártfa bookcase was transferred from the Church of St. Egidius in Bártfa to the National Museum, together with the books that constituted the first public library in the country. Indeed, after the Reformation, the town, which had become Lutheran, opened its church library to the public, which was also enriched with the works of the Reformers.
- The letterforms of the printed missals of the 15th century followed the letterforms of the handwritten codices. The volumes left blank spaces for ornate initials and pictures, which were then hand-painted.
- The urban bourgeoisie engaged in long-distance trade were initially mostly of German and Italian origin, with family connections extending to several towns. These family ties can be seen, for example, on the tombstone of Miklós Dobringer (Nicolaus Dobrynger), a citizen of Buda who died in 1462.The coat of arms depicted there is also found in the Selmecbánya law book, with the inscription "Jacob Dobrynger".
- The German towns of the 16th and 17th centuries revived the Gothic style of gold- and silversmithing and alternately called it altkirchlich ("Old Church") or siebenbürgisch ("Transylvanian"), since Transylvanian goldsmiths preserved the Gothic forms even in the late period and transmitted them to the Balkans.
From the early 1500s, the pair of cruets from Nagyvárad (today: Oradea, Romania) combines late Gothic naturalism with filigree decoration. Purchased from the Bethlen family, this pair of cruets, crafted in the first quarter of the 1500s, came from the cathedral of Nagyvárad according to family tradition, combines late Gothic naturalistic pear-shaped decoration from Nuremberg with more abstract filigree surface decoration, considered characteristically Hungarian. One of the earliest known drawings of a pear-shaped figurine is by Albrecht Dürer, whose father was from Ajtós near Nagyvárad, and the object may thus bear witness to the Nuremberg-Hungarian relations among gold- and silversmiths that existed in Dürer's time.
The late 15th-century chalice, with its fully aniconic, beaded, foliate scroll decoration, was commissioned by János Ernuszt, Master of the Horse of King Ulászló I, later ban of Croatia and Slavonia (1507–1510). It bears the coat of arms of his father-in-law and mother-in-law, Imre Pálóczi, Master of the Horse, and Dorottya Rozgonyi. János Ernuszt's wife, Anna Pálóczi, died in 1494, so the chalice must have been commissioned before then.
The so-called Bothár workshop in Besztercebánya (today: Banská Bystrica, Slovakia) produced high-quality glazed tiles with figural decoration, mostly depicting saints, at the end of the 15th century. Some half-finished, ruined tiles have been preserved, six of which have been transferred to the Hungarian National Museum. The article in the picture depicts the haloed Saint Peter holding the keys of heaven.
One of the earliest known leather spectacle frames was found behind the panel of an altar in Liptószentandrás (today: Liptovský Ondrej, Slovakia).
