Old Hungarian Enamels [antikvár]

Owing to her geographical position, and for historical reasons closely connected with this, Hungary has often proved to be an intermediary between widely divergent cultures; and many of the characteristic features of her own art are due to her having been a meeting point of East and West, of North and South. In the feudal period the way of life of the great aristocratic landowners ruling over vast estates, and later the increasingly centralized power of the throne, were both conducive to the development not only of luxury and magnificence, but also of a native art. The most imposing achievements of this art, however, were almost completely destroyed, first by the Tartar invasion (1241—1242) and later during the Turkish occupation, which lasted from 1526 to 1686. Yet a number of smaller works of this period have come down to us. A relatively high proportion of them are the work of goldsmiths and jewellers, thus enabling us to trace, in coherent series, the peculiar splendour and individual strength attained by native craftsmen in what is considered to be the most characteristically Hungarian of the arts. The secret of its great traditions and high achievement lies in the fact that the work of Hungarian craftsmen, while it did not attain the artistic freedom displayed by the artists of Italy, Germany or France in the Gothic period, when they were producing their most gorgeous work, was nevertheless