Countess Dracula (21 page)

An example was the private note sent from Cardinal Andrew Báthory to Elisabeth in 1587, prefaced: ‘may this letter be given into the hands of my most beloved sister . . .':

I wish all the best to my beloved sister. I had to travel to Rome, I informed them of the sad news of the death of King Stephen [Báthory of Poland and Transylvania]. I pray that the man who has presented my letter to you remain unknown to the others in your court, for his mission requires secrecy and it would not be good if others knew him. Please ask your husband to forgive me, we shall certainly meet one another on the next occasion. A certain Venetian gentleman has accompanied my man, he is a great friend to our family, therefore I pray you to take care of him. I hope he will be given all that he needs in your court.
²²

After Francis was gone, some also speculated that his loss combined with Elisabeth's menopause, aggravated by the lurking family taint, tipped her into madness from which she never recovered. Once again there is no evidence for this: no change of tone in the letters she wrote, no abrupt withdrawal from public life. If she was insane, it was a carefully concealed insanity which went unremarked by her fellow aristocrats.

Although no one spoke up publicly on her behalf when she was arrested, she had not been friendless. She may have enjoyed the dubious attentions of Ironhead Stephen and the loyalty of her crones, but far from being a social pariah, a famous madwoman, Countess Báthory was also, in the words of one recent commentator, ‘much respected and loved by other aristocratic ladies: many corresponded with her and more visited her'.
²³
She seems to have been especially close to Lady Margaret Choron, the wife of Lord Christopher Nádasdy, her father-in-law's younger brother, with whom she exchanged frequent letters around the turn of the century and she also corresponded with Lord Bathory who advised her on political matters after her husband's death.
²⁹
If witnesses at the interrogation sessions are to be believed, she boasted of the calibre and number of her advisers and supporters: whoever they were, they failed her when she had most need of them.

The letters and the bills and contracts and the statements lodged in official records are not enough in themselves to bring the people of the past fully into existence: to a modern ‘western' eye, the surviving portraits of the protagonists look like quaint caricatures, even grotesque, but we must remember that the Hungarian aesthetic of the time was constrained in two ways. Firstly, the artists available to the far-flung courts of the Hungarian and Transylvanian aristocrats were usually itinerants, mainly Italians or their local imitators, working quickly on one-off commissions for which they sometimes simply substituted heads on to a standard set of shoulders or on to the template body of a rider on horseback. In a time of almost permanent warfare the true likenesses of men, at least, were subordinated to the need to show their power, ferocity and heroism: piercing eyes, bristling moustaches and thick, curling beards were
de rigueur.
Cardinal Andrew Báthory appears in his portraits first as an intense and nervously alert presence, then, with raised eyebrows and half-smile, as a severed head on display. Prince Sigmund is shown at the age of twenty-six with the large eyes, long nose and sensual lips common to many images of the Báthorys, then at a later date as a blustering tyrant with bulging eyes and a curlicued topknot. Francis Nádasdy is pictured, full-length, as a stooping, kaftanned bear of a man, with the uncomfortable look of a warrior impatient to return to the fray (his father's fears regarding a snub nose had been quite groundless). From several portraits the bushy-bearded Palatine, George Thurzó, glares fixedly at the artist with a sort of savage imperiousness from beneath luxuriant black eyebrows, while his arch-enemy, Gábor Báthory, the great seducer, is painted as a jaunty clown. The results are in all cases quite different both from the delicate-featured dandies in their colourful finery who appear in Elizabethan English portraiture and from the more austere and haughty elegance of Habsburg likenesses.

The first reference to the existence of a portrait of Elisabeth Báthory comes in R. A. von Elsberg's 1894 work,
Die Blutgräfin,
in which he includes a poor black-and-white copy of a picture which he had seen in the gallery of the aristocratic Zay family. The image is of a dark-eyed young woman with dark hair drawn under a cap, and wearing a starched lace collar above a bodice and apron. The person depicted in the somewhat bland portrait seems a pert rather than sinister figure, but von Elsberg sees more in it than that:

She is Elisabeth Báthory, but is she at the same time the tigress? She is a lady of high rank with a cultivated mind, but her great eyes let us see deeper within to her devilish passion. Her finely chiselled nose, her wilful and obstinate lips show her siren-like personality, her wild heart . . . long white hands and in contrast to her white skin, her black hair: these are the features which perfectly define her difficult nature.
²⁴

The costume worn by the girl in the von Elsberg picture and her pose are almost identical to those in the two portraits which survived into the twentieth century, one of which can still be viewed. His picture and the portrait kept until recently in
Č
achtice are probably one and the same, although it is possible that there still exists a third version, hanging forgotten in a private gallery in one of the great houses of middle Europe.

The only portrait of Countess Báthory which can still be seen, although it is not on public display, is kept in storage in the National Museum in Budapest. The shades of red, red-brown and gold on this full-length canvas are rich, and the overall condition is excellent, partly because the painting was restored in 1974 when 75 per cent of the surface, excluding the face, hands and apron, were overpainted and some detail, particularly around the subject's right hand, was lost. Still, the whole work is convincing as an early modern family portrait and, although no masterpiece, it meets the criteria of official portraiture; it expresses a dignified formality at a distance which gives way to a different sense of intimacy when seen from close up.

The woman in the painting stands stiffly and stares gravely out at the world, but when the viewer gazes into her face, a more sensitive and enigmatic expression, an awareness in the eyes and the hint of a smile, is revealed. (For the historian Katalin Péter, the Budapest portrait is genuine but reveals a sullen, ‘ugly moth', a stupid woman, oppressed physically and socially by her huge vulgarian husband. Another Hungarian, the art historian István Kelényi, disagrees: ‘I like her, I think she is pretty in that painting.') She has the large brown eyes, the high forehead, long nose and prominent ears common to her fellow-Báthorys, but these are to some extent stylistic conventions of the period. Other conventional features are more significant. The artist uses the late Renaissance language of symbolism in the detail surrounding the figure. Elisabeth holds in her right hand an almost invisible key,
a sign that she was accomplished in domestic organisation, a perfect mistress of her household. On her little finger is a ring, signifying in those days generosity (and not the coquettishness which it later came to mean), and she is wearing pearls, which stand for nobility of character as well as great material wealth. On the table upon which Elisabeth's hand rests there is a little ornamental clock, at that period a rare and precious object which also symbolised life and continuity. The clock is standing on a small box, which can denote a knowledge of medicine and healing, or may just imply the possession of secrets, which Elisabeth's own box, described by witnesses and by her son, certainly contained.

Of the known portraits, this is the most likely to be authentic, but there are problems in proving beyond doubt that it is a likeness taken from the living lady. The painting bears the date 1594, but this does not mean that it was produced at that time (dates inscribed on canvases could also refer to famous events, battles or the birthdates of children); the costume that Elisabeth is wearing is almost identical to one shown in a portrait of Christina Nyáry, the wife of Palatine Esterházy, dated 1625, leading some to suspect that it was reconstructed using that better-known painting as a model. (The Dutch expert Dr J. van Wadum saw the Báthory portrait when it was on loan to The Hague and pronounced it genuine, dating it to the period 1594 to 1620 and pointing out the Italian rather than Austrian style, which would accord with the close family links with Venice and Padua.) More importantly, the portrait of Elisabeth seems to be the work of the same artist who produced portraits of her son Paul Nádasdy and his wife Judith Révay around the year 1633 and it seems probable to this writer that all three pictures, together with the matching portrait of Francis Nádasdy, were commissioned then, either by Paul to fill the portrait cabinet of one of the Nádasdy properties, or by his widow to commemorate Paul's death the same year.
²⁵
This would mean that the work was not taken from life, though it may well be a copy from a lost original painted while Elisabeth was still alive.

One of the first consequences of the opening up of eastern-central Europe after the demise of communism was a field-day for art thieves, who took advantage of the naivety of curators and the almost total lack of security devices and quietly looted museums and churches all over the region, often stealing to order on behalf of collectors from wealthier neighbouring countries. In
Č
achtice in 1990 someone broke into the
little museum in the manor-house and made off with several early oil paintings of local dignitaries, including what is thought by some to be an authentic image of Elisabeth Báthory created in her own lifetime, but which is dismissed by others as a fake. The technique of that painting, which was ascribed to one Valentino, was also mediocre but by no means abysmal: examination of photographs shows that it bore the date 1593, or possibly 1598, but this rendering appears to be the likeness of a young girl and not a woman in her thirties, as Elisabeth was in that decade. At some point – certainly not during Elisabeth's lifetime – the caption in Latin,
Hyena Chejtensis
(‘the Hyena of Csejthe'), has been added, and lower down on the canvas and almost invisible is a second date, 1869. The canvas had been crudely cut down but was originally full-length, and the costume details seem to have been overpainted at some point perhaps to conform to late-seventeenth-century fashions. The young Countess which this portrait gives us has a haunting, tantalising expression into which many other qualities can be read, from bruised innocence to cool cunning, and it has been widely reproduced as being the definitive incarnation of the real Elisabeth.

Unfortunately, although it fascinates, there are good reasons to think that the
Č
achtice portrait is a reconstruction produced in the nineteenth century, either to coincide with an upsurge of local interest in the case in Slovakia (two books that might have been inspired by the painting appeared in 1870)
²⁶
or again as a commission for the collection of a noble family, perhaps the Zays. Apart from the inconsistencies implied in the two dates inscribed on it, there is one glaring anachronism in the picture: the artist has given Elisabeth a pointed nineteenth-century rather than straight baroque bodice; and the cuffs and collar she is wearing seem to be a crude imitation of those on the Budapest portrait.

As always with Elisabeth Báthory, the fascination felt for her by later ages has tended to obscure rather than reveal the truth.

There is little friendship in the world,
and least of all between equals . . .

Francis Bacon,
Essays,
‘Of Followers and Friends'

Count George Thurzó ~ the Hungarian lords and the Empire ~ the trial of Illésházy and the Bocskai insurrection ~ plots and counterplots ~ gruesome folktales ~ the Báthory-Thurzó correspondence ~ a widow's defiance ~ Elisabeth's domains