Renaissance art between Italy and Slovakia

Brief analysis of the relationship between history and art of two European worlds that are only apparently distant

In order to understand the origins of the Slovak Renaissance and the link created over time with the Italian one, it is necessary to make a historical premise focused on the history of Hungary, to which Slovak history, even if partially, is linked.

The most incisive architect of cultural development in the humanistic and Renaissance sense of Slovakia, although it was at that time a peripheral province of the Kingdom of Hungary, was Matthias Corvinus, an enlightened ruler, elected in 1458, who founded various places of culture in the cities of his kingdom and he maintained close relations with the Milanese, Florentine, Neapolitan and papal courts, importing – if the term is permitted – the Italian Renaissance into his own lands.

Mattia Corvino tapped heavily into Italian culture and by importing it into his kingdom, he implemented and developed the arts and beauty, generating a new and richer cultural horizon.

It is for this reason that the already existing relations between the two lands must also be underlined, with specific attention to the corresponding benefits.

At the end of the fourteenth century important relations between Milan and Hungary are already documented, such as the presence, in 1391, of the sculptor Lasse of Hungary and his workshop, made up of around one hundred stonemasons, at the Fabbrica del Duomo in Milan, for the creation of the masks of the corbels that decorate some late Gothic sculptures found in 1974 during the excavations of the Royal Palace of Buda.

The fifteenth century was certainly the most interesting century for the closest contacts that characterized the two cultures, their politics and the Italian and Hungarian dynasties.

The fulcrum of everything, as already mentioned, was Mattia Corvino who, worried about the understanding between the emperor Frederick III and the prince of Burgundy Charles the Bold, in 1473 made an alliance with Milan, a city which adopted a Francophile orientation against the Habsburgs.

Add to this the recognition by the Lombard Sforza family of Mattia’s illegitimate son, Janos Corvino, and the marriage proposal between Janos himself and Bianca Maria Sforza, daughter of Galeazzo Maria and Bona di Savoia.

With the death of Matthias, on April 6, 1490, and the unsuccessful election of Janos Corvinus as king of Hungary, the marriage failed and in 1494 Bianca Maria Sforza married the emperor Maximilian II, enemy of Matthias and Janos, thus marking a turning point in relations between the two nations.Beyond the dynastic questions, what remains of the relationship between Mattia Corvino and the Italian Renaissance?

First of all, the miniatures of the codes produced at the royal court of Buda which testify to the links between Lombard and Hungarian art of the last quarter of the fifteenth century.

In the field of architecture, there were various contributions from the skilled Lombard workers, made up of architects, engineers, superintendents, master builders and masons, who played an important role in the Hungarian and Slovak military construction sites between the 15th and 16th centuries.

Thanks to the comparison of different studies on the political conditions, the needs of the defense and the personalities of the military technicians, historiography has highlighted on the one hand the primacy of the Italians, and of the Lombards in particular, in military architecture and on the other the activity of the Austrian Habsburgs’ military policy in relation to the problem of the borders, which could only be defended by a costly system of strongholds to build, maintain and garrison.

Both in Slovakia and in Hungary, various fortifications were erected on Lombard models from the mid-14th century, almost all subsequently restructured under the rule of Matthias Corvinus.

The prototypes of inspiration, always with a quadrangular plan with corner towers, were various castles in Lombardy.

In Slovakia, the castles of Zvolen, built as his own residence in 1390 by King Louis I of Anjou, Vigľaš, Banska Bystrica, Bojnice, Krasna Horka, fortified in 1546 on a project by the architect Alessandro da Vedano, should be considered.

A stand-alone topic is constituted by the castle of Bratislava, built towards the X century on a pre-existing Roman castro, it became the seat of the new capital, transferred from Buda towards 1420, during the last years of the government of the emperor Sigismund, thanks to its position dominant, impregnable and central to his new empire.

Between 1431 and 1434 the first transformation into German Gothic style took place, as evidenced by the only plugged mullioned window and the well-known Porta di Sigismondo, also known as Porta Corvino, therefore after Sigismondo’s death in 1437, the clashes broke out between the local nobles and the population inevitably stopped the work until the restoration which took place between the years 1452 and 1463.

From 1531, after the Ottomans conquered the territory of present-day Hungary, Bratislava became the capital and seat of the diet and of all the main authorities, as well as the crowning place of what remained of the Hungarian kingdom and called the Kingdom of Hungary, ruled from the Austrian House of Habsburg.

After a long period of neglect, Bratislava Castle finally returned to be the fundamental political center and the official seat of the new royal family, even if it actually continued to reside in Vienna.

The call of Italian architects for military constructions by the Viennese Hofkriegsrat (War Council) and other fortifications and buildings throughout the Empire dates from this period.

The history of the Slovak Renaissance, inextricably linked to the same Hungarian history, overcoming the geographical borders that have changed over the centuries, is clear confirmation that culture overcomes any orographic, political or language barrier.

Among all the cultural exchanges that have characterized the relations between Italy and Hungary, certainly, there is the fresco pictorial art which expresses the highest results, thanks also to an extremely cultured character who brought the Italian Renaissance directly into Hungary: Cardinal Branda Castiglioni (1350-1443).

In 1403 Pope Boniface IX entrusted him with a mission as apostolic nuncio by sending them to Hungary and Transylvania and it was on this occasion that he established a deep friendship with the King of Hungary and Emperor, Sigismund of Luxembourg.

His appointment as cardinal on 6 June 1411 by the antipope John XXIII further strengthened his position with Sigismund in Hungary, where from the same year he became count of Veszprem.

On 25 April 1425 Branda Castiglioni met Masolino da Panicale, in those days engaged in Florence with Masaccio on the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine church in Florence and, in September of the same year, Masolino left for the land of Hungary, called by Cardinal Branda Castiglioni, who later became his patron, effectively importing Italian Renaissance painting into those lands.

Masolino’s introduction to the Hungarian court depended on the leader Filippo Buondelmonti Scolari, known as Pippo Spano, who arrived in Hungary at the age of thirteen following a Florentine merchant.

Masolino was summoned to have him paint his chapel in Szekesfehervar, which was then finished by Filippino Lippi. We owe the funds for the construction, in Florence, of the Rotonda di Santa Maria degli Angeli to Scolari, and the financing of numerous public utility works in the villages he administers, such as the castle of Ozora and the hospital of Santa Elisabetta in Lipova.

Masolino, who returned to Italy in 1427 after the death of his patron, received the last payments from the heirs, although unfortunately nothing remains of his works in Hungary, except knowledge.However, many paintings, especially the frescoes from the first decades of the fifteenth century that survived in some Hungarian village churches, still testify to contact with Italian artists today.

On the trace of the strong ties between Italy and Hungary, one cannot fail to mention the frescoes which, although by Italian hand, decorate Michelozzo’s courtyard in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence with angel’s eye view maps reproducing the main cities of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Hungary, above all Bratislava, with the ancient denomination Pozsony.

In 1565, on the occasion of the wedding between Francesco I de’ Medici, son of Cosimo I, and Giovanna of Austria, sister of Emperor Maximilian II, the courtyard was decorated according to a project by Giorgio Vasari, and the lunettes of the portico were frescoed by Bastiano Lombardi, Cesare Baglioni and Turino Piemontese, in honor of Queen Giovanna, the city views of the Habsburg Empire: Prague, Passavia (Passago), Stein, Klosterneuburg, Graz.