St. Ulrich and St. Nicholas; on the reverse: the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand. Detail from the movable wing of a winged altarpiece

The inner and outer sides of this altarpiece wing were each assigned a separate inventory number: on the inner side was an image of saint-bishops (55.408) and on the outer side the martyrs of Mount Ararat (55.409).

The image on the former feast-day side, painted with essentially no primer, has survived in far better condition, presumably because the entire surface was lined with a canvas support. The strongly abraded and fragmented depiction on the outer side is an unusual image type of the ten thousand martyrs, showing not the act of martyrdom itself but rather the martyrs lined up one after the other. The names of the five saints in the foreground appear in their haloes, thus making identification possible. Although the inscriptions are rather worn and fragmented, Hermann von Fritzlar’s 14th-century legendary and the Acta Sanctorum allow us to clearly reconstruct them:

From left to right: [THE]ODER[V]S / [DVX] E[LI]A[DES] AR[?] / [ERMOLAVS vagy SEVPSIVS] / [S(ANCTVS)] [AGA]TIVS • CV(M) • SOCI(I)S / CARTERIV[S]

The monogram FH appears on the former inner side of the panel in Gothic miniscule script on a red and white checked floor. Interestingly, the pressed brocade (Pressbrokat) ornamentation, a sign of high-quality workmanship, appears not only on the feast-day side, but on the workday side too.

Provenance

Ipolyi collection. ‘84. Altarpiece image with St. George of Tours and the bishop St. Nicholas on the recto; a large group of saints on the verso with Eliades, Acacius and Speusippus on the reverse. 15th and 16th c. Vigorously overpainted.’ (Lakatos-Balla 292)

Restauration

1983-84 Nagy Éva

Bibliography

• Boskovits Miklós-Mojzer Miklós-Mucsi András: Az esztergomi Keresztény Múzeum képtára (Budapest, 1964. Akadémiai Kiadó), 171.
• Magyarország műemléki topográfiája I. Esztergom 1. Esztergom műemlékei (összeállította: Genthon István; Budapest 1948) 116.
• Új Magyar Sion 1871 II. 374.
• Kalauz a Bihar vármegyei és Nagyváradi Régészeti és Történelmi Egylet Múzeumához. Nagyvárad 1898., 84. sz.