Last week while I was in Vienna, I took a one day trip to Budapest because I just had to have another look at the amazing Matthias Church.
The reason I am so madly in love with this church is because the interior is completely covered with hundreds of different painted repeating patterns…from the frescoes on the walls to the spiraling designs on the stone pillars.
These painted frescoes and designs were created by the two most important historical painters of the era, Bertalan Székely and Károly Lotz. They also created the beautiful stained glass windows in the church.
Following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867, Matthias Church was the scene of a grand coronation ceremony when Franz Joseph and his wife Elizabeth (also known as Empress Sisi) were crowned, and thus the Austro-Hungarian Empire was established.
On this trip I also finally made it to the Sisi Museum, which is part of the Hofburg Castle Museum complex in Vienna. It is all about Sisi who was a very popular figure, with a life full of tragedy, who was eventually assassinated.
I have a special interest in Sisi because I had a client in New York who was Sisi’ s descendant. She told me stories about her great-grandmother and years later I finally “met” Sisi when I saw her famous Winterhalter portrait.
Sisi lived in a time of great opulence, but also a time of tremendous art and design. She wore gowns that had yards and yards of exquisite fabric. She ate off handpainted plates created by imperial artisans, and decorated her knee-length hair with starry ornaments. She was a celebrity in her own time, surrounded by the rich expression of ornamental arts that flourished during her lifetime.
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