RA Magazine Autumn 2010

Issue Number: 108

The fabulous Esterházys

The Esterházy dynasty spans generations of princes who amassed scores of palaces and one of Europe’s most impressive private art collections. Rosie Goldsmith discovers the key players in the extraordinary tale of a family’s fortune

The Esterházy Palace of Fertöd, built at the end of the eighteenth century, is known as the Hungarian Versailles ‘Look into the lavish treasury of the glorious Esterházy line and see the boundless abundance of its riches. Tell me, would you be able to number them?’– Funeral oration for the Archbishop Count Imré Esterházy, 1746

In 1764 the poet Goethe spoke of the ‘fairy kingdom of the Esterházys’, after attending one of their balls: the sumptuous palace décor, the fireworks, the illumination of an entire forest, seemed the stuff of fairytales. Meanwhile, the eighteenth-century count Johann Pálffy wrote: ‘It’s a recognised fact that there is nothing better on this earth than to be a Prince Esterházy.’

During their heyday in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Esterházy family were Hungary’s leading patrons of art and music – and its biggest landowners. They built palaces, designed gardens, created world-class collections of trees, art and books, and employed Haydn as court composer. Their connections spanned kings, queens, nobility and statesmen. Their lifestyle and court entertainments were legendary: they hunted, staged operas, plays and concerts on a grand scale; they bought diamond- studded clothes; black swans and peacocks adorned their lawns. At one time they were said to be richer than the Austrian Emperor.

Even today, the Esterházy name remains a calling card for Hungary. You see it on the tourist trail, on wine labels, on plaques in museums, on the covers of books by their descendant, the contemporary novelist Peter Esterházy.

The story of this dynasty also mirrors the changing borders and fortunes of Hungary. It starts in the twelfth century in Galánta, a small settlement in the north (now Slovakia) where the family originated. ‘Ház’ means ‘house’ but the origin of the word ‘Ester’ is unknown. Their full name is still ‘Esterházy de Galánta’.

The first famous Esterházy was the charismatic statesman and general, Count Nikolaus (1582-1645) who conquered the Turks (collecting a few choice ornaments in the process) and launched the Esterházys onto the national stage. He was granted the title of ‘Count’ and elected Palatine (Vice-Regent) of Royal Hungary. The titles ‘Count’ and later ‘Prince’ became hereditary as rewards for the family’s loyalty to the Habsburgs. Through their acquisition of land (and the German language) their astute marriages and loyalty to both the Roman Catholic Church and the Habsburg Empire, their wealth and influence grew rapidly.

Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael, 'Esterházy Madonna', c.1507-08. Tempera and oil on panel, 29 x 21.5 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest Count Nikolaus and his son Paul (1635-1713) a poet, painter and composer, began the first phase of serious Esterházy palace-building and art-collecting. They were followed by Prince Nikolaus the Magnificent (1714-1790) who enthusiastically boosted the Esterházy painting collection to 348 works. However, according to Stefan Koerner, Curator of the Esterházy Collections, based at the Eisenstadt Palace in Austria, ‘This was mainly “house art”, and not the best, with only one truly valuable piece: the “Esterházy Madonna” [right] by Raphael.’

Nikolaus I was nevertheless ‘magnificent’ in his palace-building and patronage of music. He turned a family hunting lodge at Süttör – today known as Fertöd – into the sumptuous rococo Esterházy Palace. With its 126 rooms, theatre, opera house, fountains and gardens, it was dubbed ‘The Hungarian Versailles’. Just 40km away, in what is now Austria, the Esterházys also created the spectacular Eisenstadt Palace, converting it from a medieval fortress into first a baroque and later a neo- classical palace. Although Eisenstadt was the Esterházys’ main home for over 300 years, it was only one of 160-odd palaces and houses they commissioned in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries across the whole of Europe. Today some of these buildings are in ruins; those in Hungary are state-owned (after Communism) and the others – now mainly on Austrian territory – are part of the Esterházy Private Foundation, and not family-owned. The palaces at both Eisenstadt and Fertöd are popular tourist destinations.

In 1794 the dashing Prince Nikolaus II (1765-1833) inherited the family fortune and set about making his name as a great art collector, nearly bankrupting the family in the process. He began an extensive Grand Tour, starting with six months in Italy and later taking in Paris and London. ‘Within just ten years,’ says Koerner, ‘Nikolaus II owned some of the most important old masters in the world.’ It is his collection that forms the core of the RA’s ‘Treasures from Budapest’ exhibition.

Koerner says: ‘He was manically driven and impatient. He wanted the best and most expensive of everything. This included art, gardens, palaces and women – he had several mistresses.’ The Prince was highly intelligent, passionate and enthusiastic. ‘But,’ Koerner adds, ‘it is also because he used the best experts and dealers in Europe to advise him that his collection is so important. Being a patron of the arts and a leading cultural figure was part of his understanding of his role as a Prince.’

During the turmoil created by the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Wars, the art market was awash with great art from disbanded estates and palaces. In a 30-year spending spree, Nikolaus II indulged his insatiable appetite, acquiring 1,200 paintings and thousands of drawings. He bought drawings by Dürer, Poussin, Rubens, Leonardo and Rembrandt, for example the exquisite Saskia van Uylenburgh Sitting by a Window; paintings by Tintoretto (The Supper At Emmaus of 1542-43), Murillo, Reynolds and Goya (The Water Carrier 1808-12). The Prince appointed the Viennese engraver, Joseph Fischer, to administer and curate his collection both at home and abroad.

But where to put everything? The Prince started building a gallery wing in the Eisenstadt Palace, inspired by the Louvre, but it wasn’t completed. As Napoleon advanced through Habsburg territory, the Prince was exiled to Budapest. One popular myth of the Esterházys – ‘and it is only a myth’, insists Koerner – ‘is that Napoleon offered to make Nikolaus King of Hungary, to win over the Esterházys. But, loyal to his own, the Prince refused.’

He died in 1833, the dream over, the money gone and with no worthy home for the collection. It wandered from palace to palace, viewed only by family and friends. Eventually, it went on public display in Vienna in the galleries of the Mariahilfer palace, owned by the Esterházys, which is where it stayed until 1871. After the revolutions of 1848 across Europe, Hungary was in a nationalist ferment, calling for independence from Austria and the Habsburgs. Nationalists also demanded Hungarian ‘national arts’, and in 1865 Prince Paul Anton III (1786- 1866) was encouraged to show his Hungarian patriotism by transporting the Esterházy art collection from Vienna to Budapest.

In 1871 this remarkable private collection was purchased by the Hungarian state: 637 paintings (including the ‘Esterházy Madonna’) and thousands of prints, illustrated books and drawings were sold by Prince Nikolaus III (1817-1894) to pay off the Esterházy debts. ‘The rest of the collection,’ Koerner says, ‘was auctioned off privately. The Esterházys today retain only some family portraits and minor works from Prince Nikolaus II’s famous collection.’

The Hungarian state proudly displayed its new acquisitions, first in the Budapest Academy of Sciences, then from 1906 in the new Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, where it remains today. (Incidentally, in 1983 the ‘Esterházy Madonna’ was stolen from the museum, along with six other Italian masterpieces but they were all recovered the next year in Greece.)

The upheavals for the family continued. After the First World War and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the several branches of Esterházys found themselves in Austria, Germany and Hungary, as well as in Australia and Canada. After 1945, the Soviet-backed government expropriated all Hungarian estates of more than 50 hectares, which included those of the Esterházys. Prince Paul (1901-1989) was subjected to a show trial, followed by eight years in prison. He was freed during the 1956 revolution and fled Hungary to manage the Esterházy’s Austrian holdings. Today they are managed by Paul’s heir, the 90-year-old Princess Melinda Esterházy, in Eisenstadt; she has no children. In order to preserve the family heritage the Esterházy Foundations were created.

Peter Esterházy (b.1950) has written at length about his family, fictionalised in his book Celestial Harmonies (2004). For him, the family name is ‘an omen, a sign, a portentous sign’ but one synonymous with the word ‘aristocrat’. Dignified, profligate, admired and sometimes feared, Hungary’s most famous aristocrats have descended from their fairytale palaces to join the real world. One of them, Peter’s brother Márton, was even in the Hungarian national football team. Their art collection too has survived the vagaries of history. Today on public display, it is a reminder of a time when princes pursued masterpieces with full purses and passionate abandon. The treasures on show at the Royal Academy reveal a glimpse of the Esterházys’ wealth and vision.

• Rosie Goldsmith chairs The Fabulous Esterházys, a lecture given by Stefan Koerner at the Royal Academy of Arts, on 26 November 2010.

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