Arpadian Royal Cult in the Zagreb Cathedral: From Gothic to Baroque

The paper focuses on the problem of continuity and development of iconographical solutions related to some prominent elements of historical furnishing in the Zagreb cathedral (tabernacle, St Ladislas’ altar in the north apse), observing their changes over a longer time span: from the late 15th to the early 18th century. A monumental gothic tabernacle (Sakramentshaus) that originally stood in the north of the sanctuary was probably erected during the embellishment of the cathedral presbytery, carried out by Bishop Osvald Thuz (1466–1499). According to later historical descriptions, its high stone structure comprised statues of the holy Hungarian kings Stephen and Ladislas, Prince St Emeric and St Martin of Tours, and was topped by angels and a pelican (symbol of the Eucharist). The tabernacle was removed during the redecoration of the sanctuary around 1800, but it could arguably be connected to a sandstone fragment preserved at the Croatian History Museum, which depicts a crowned head of an old man (identified as St Stephen). When, in 1701, the new marble tabernacle was placed upon the high altar, it once more featured the Arpadian saints. Unfortunately, it was also destroyed and dispersed during the 19th century, but the already known sculptures of St Stephen and St Ladislas have now been related to a small marble statue of St Emeric from the Arts and Crafts Museum in Zagreb. An interesting example of specific iconographical development can, furthermore, be observed in two painted cycles with St Ladislas’ legend, which once adorned the saint’ s altars from the 15th and 17th centuries. Departing from the ingrained medieval hagiographical sources, the later cycle arguably reflects the 17th-century development in Croatian political and historiographic ideas by introducing some new iconographical motives as well as re-using some of the old ones