MURALS DISCOVERED IN THE CHOIR OF THE

PRESENT FRANCISCAN CHURCH OF SIBIU1

Dana Jenei

Keywords: Sibiu, church, wall painting, iconography, St. Achatius, St. Ursula
Cuvinte cheie: Sibiu, bserică, pictură murală, iconografie, Sf. Acatius, Sf. Ursula

PICTURILE MURALE DESCOPERITE ÎN CORUL

ACTUALEI BISERICI FRANCISCANE DIN SIBIU
Rezumat
Picturile murale recent descoperite și restaurate în corul bisericii franciscane din Sibiu în 2016,
deși grav afectate de modificările construcţiei de la începutul secolului al XVIII-lea și de pierderea
elementelor de detaliu cauzată de tehnica mixtă folosită, sunt importante pentru cunoașterea artei
transilvănene de la începutul secolului al XVI-lea, când autorul său prezumptiv, pictorul local
Henricus, încheia tradiţia picturii gotice târzii la Sibiu, în jurul anului 1515. Alături de acesta a lucrat
un exponent al noii generaţii, care a realizat partea inferioară a Martiriului celor zece mii de soldaţi,
interpretând original gravura lui Albrecht Dürer (B. 117, 1496–1497), în maniera renascentistă a
Şcolii Dunărene.
Ansamblul are o valoare istorică incontestabilă și o iconografie unică în voievodat, cuprinzând
imaginea care îl reprezintă pe Cristos intercedând pe lângă Dumnezeu Tatăl, respectiv scenele celor
Unsprezece mii de fecioare și Zece mii de soldaţi martiri redate în asociere, la fel ca în alte ansam‑
bluri precum pictura mai veche de pe spatele predelei Behaim, atribuită lui Johannes Siebenbürger
din biserica Sf. Ecaterina din Nürnberg, o mănăstire de surori dominicane, la fel ca cea din Sibiu,
înainte de Reformă.

In 2016, previously unknown paintings were brought to light on the side walls of the old choir
of the Franciscan church in Sibiu by the restoration team coordinated by Lóránd Kiss and Péter Pál,
at whose invitation I have analysed the representations at the site. The same year I gave a lecture and
published a brief presentation on the topic2.

*
1
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Research and Innovation, CCCDI – UEFISCDI,
project number PN-III-P1–1.2-PCCDI–2017-0812 / 53PCCDI, within PNCDI III
2
Dana Jenei, The Paintings of the Franciscan Church in Sibiu, at The Yearly Session of the Mediaeval Art Section of the
Art Institute „G. Oprescu”, the Romanian Academy in Bucharest: New Data in the Research of the Mediaeval Art in Romania,
the 12th edition, November 2016; eadem, Gothic in Transylvania. The Painting (c. 1300–1500), Bucharest, 2016, p. 77.

ARS TRANSSILVANIAE, XXVII–XXVIII, 2017–2018, p. 31–48

32 Dana Jenei

The church located in the former Nonnengasse3, near the eastern walls of the medieval city, was
conceded to the provincial custodians of the Franciscan Order in 1716, by the new administration
of Transylvania. The late Gothic church with its polygonal apse, rectangular choir and buttresses was
remodeled in a Baroque style at that date with semicircular and a vela vaults, two chapels arranged on
the northern side of the nave, a bell tower and cloister attached to the exterior, to the south-west. The
interior was decorated and furnished from the donations made by several imperial Austrian dignitaries,
first among whom was Count Johann Stephan von Steinville, Commander-in-Chief of Transylvania
between 1710 and 1720, who supported the return of the Catholic monastic orders to the Principality,
banished by the Reformation. The construction works were completed in 1723, but the vaults were
again rebuilt in 1776, other repairs being recorded in 1893, 1953 and 19724.
The interventions of 2016 uncovered Baroque consecration crosses painted on the pilasters of
the new vaulting system at the last sanctification of the church and, most important, the images on the
lateral walls of the Gothic choir, surviving under the lime, but seriously damaged by the architectural
alterations of the eighteenth century.

*
On the northern side of the sanctuary, a large-scale late Gothic monstrance painted in grisaille
was discovered, but only its upper part with the characteristic tall slim pinnacles and the host centrally
exposed is preserved. The image reminds the silversmith-patterns engravings executed by the Master
A.W. and Israhel van Meckenem, or Lucas Cranach’s designs in Dye Zaigung des hochlobwirdigen
Hailigthumbs der Stifft-Kirchen aller Hailigen zu Wittenburg (Wittenberg, 1509). In the Eucharistic
scenes, such monstrances are borne by angels, as in the Nuremberg Gradual, with the inscription
ECCE PANIS ANGELORUM (1507–1510, MS M.905 I, fol. 2095). The Holy Sacrament kept by
angels and framed by Saints Peter and Paul was painted inside the Transylvanian church in Maiad
(Mureș district), on the eastern wall of the nave, under the image of the Crucifixion5.
More extensive painted surfaces were brought to light on the opposite wall of the choir, to the
south, which are also degraded and lacunar because of the later construction work including a new
door to the cloister with window above, the canopy of the episcopal seat, and the pillars attached to
the lateral walls. The archaeologically restored paintings can be studied for their iconography and style,
but a proper artistic analysis has to take into consideration the fact that the representations are now
deprived of their superimposed details because of the original mixed technique used.
The images are organized in two registers, the superior one being delimited by decorative strips
of white and grey ruban plisée, which are also used to divide the scenes vertically. In the lower part, the
last two images to the east are demarcated by Renaissance frames, while the curtain register seems to
be missing.
The scenes painted above, from east to the west, represent the martyrdom of the Ten Thousand
Soldiers in association with the Eleven Thousand Virgins, whose cult reached its zenith in the fifteenth
century and the beginning of the sixteenth. The two themes were frequently represented together in
3
Arnold Pankratz, Die Gassennamen Hermannstadts, Hermannstadt, 1935, p.  43. I thank Florin Blezu for the
bibliographic help.
4
Nicolae Sabău, in Adrian Andrei Rusu (Ed.) Dicţionarul mănăstirilor din Transilvania, Banat, Crișana și Maramureș,
Cluj-Napoca, 2000, pp. 237–241.
5
Zsombor Jékely – Lóránd Kiss, Középkori falképek Erdélyben. Értékmentés a Teleki László Alapítvány támogatásvál,
Budapest, 2008, p. 273.
 Murals Discovered in the Choir of the Present Franciscan Church of Sibiu 33

late medieval Catholic art, and numerous examples exist in Germany, such as the Behaim-Retabel in
Nuremberg (on the back of the predella), attributed to Johannes Siebenbürger within Pleydenwurff’s
workshop (c. 1463, some of the panels are preserved in the Fränkische Galerie, Kronach)6, the altar‑
pieces of Herford (1500, Evangelische Marienkirche & Ehemalige Kirche des Frauenstifts auf dem
Berge)7, Ilbenstadt (c. 1525, Mainz, Bischöfliches Dom- und Diözesanmuseum)8, and in Slovakia,
the retables of Berki (1480–1490, Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum)9, Banská Bystrica (1509)10
and Mlynica (1515–1520)11.
Achacius, the leader of the Ten Thousand, was a centurion of Cappadocia converted to
Christianity with his soldiers, all being martyred on Mount Ararat in Armenia at the order of the
Roman emperors Hadrian (117–138) and Antoninus (138–161), because they refused to renounce
their faith. The legend attributed to Anastasius Bibliothecarius, writing at the Papal court in the ninth
century, describes the tortures endured by the soldiers, similar to the Passion of the Saviour, being
whipped, crowned with thorns, and put to death by crucifixion, illustrating the imitatio Christi. Before
death, they asked God that all who honour their memory should enjoy health of body and soul12. In
Germany, Achacius is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and protector against the plague, as shown by
a Pestblatt printed in Augsburg by Günther Zainer (1472, Leipzig, Universitätsbiblioteck)13.
According to Louis Réau, the “fable of this collective martyrdom” was created in the twelfth
century on the model of the legion of Thebes, to inspire courage and confidence in the Crusaders, but
the popularity of the cult of Achacius grew in the late Middle Ages under the pressure of the Ottoman
threat. In religious art, the Ten Thousand Martyrs are most often represented with their bodies pierced
by the huge thorns of the acacia bushes into which they would have fallen from the steep cliffs of
Mount Ararat, the popular etymology generating the evolution of the legend14. Acta Sanctorum (BHL
0020) presents them on the day of their feast, June 22, as Martyres crucifixi in monte Ararath, and
mentions Achacius primicerius’ companions, Eliade dux, Theodorus magister militum and Carterius
campi-doctor15. The names of the first two are inscribed on their crosses in Francisco Gallego’s painting
(after 1493, Dallas, Meadow Museum)16, where the number of the martyrs crucified and wearing
crowns of thorns, is reduced to ten, in accordance with medieval rules of representation.
6
Robert Sukale, Der Maler Johannes Siebenbürger (um 1440–1483) als Vermittler Nürnberger Kunst nach
Ostmitteleuropa, in Evelin Wetter (Hrsg.), Die Länder der Böhmischen Krone und ihre Nachbarn zur Zeit der Jagiellonenkönige
(1471–1526). Kunst-Kultur-Geschichte, Ostfildern, 2004, pp. 367–369, Fig. 3–5, 11; idem, Die Erneuerung der Malerei vor
Dürer, 1., Petersberg, 2009, I, pp. 186–187; Drosedow Inv. Mecklenburg-Strelitz, I, Abb. 258, mentioned by Engelbert
Kirschbaum and Wolfgang Braunfelds (Hrsg.), Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie (LCI), Freiburg im Breisgau, 1976, 5,
pp. 19–20.
7
https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/TIUWHXLMVLZABC6VQPGLQUNHHMRPMBMM.
8
Historia Decem Millium / Martyrium in Monte Ararath / Historia S. Ursula & Sociarum Virginum, https://www.
bildindex.de/document/obj20844481?medium=fmd487528&part=3; https://www.bildindex.de/document/obj20844481
?medium=fmd487539&part=6.
9
Anna Tüskés, The Cult of St Ursula in Hungary: Legend, Altars and Reliquaries, in Jane Cartwright (Ed.), The Cult
of Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, Cardiff, 2016, p. 196.
10
Ivan Gerát, Legendary Scenes. An Essay on Medieval Pictorial Hagiography, Bratislava, 2013, p. 292.
11
http://www.kulturpool.at/plugins/kulturpool/kuposearch.action?pageNum=2&searchText=mlynica&
kupoContext=default&resultsPerPageSelect=10.
12
Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien. Iconographie des saints, III / I, Paris, 1958, pp. 13–14.
13
Viorica Guy Marica, Pictura germană între Gotic și Renaștere, București, 1981, Fig. 74.
14
Louis Réau, Iconographie, III, I, p. 13.
15
https://www.heiligenlexikon. de/ ActaSanctorum/22.Juni.html.
16
https://meadowsmuseumdallas.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Med_Ren.pdf.
34 Dana Jenei

The iconography is diverse and, in certain points, controversial, as are the scholarly interpre‑
tations. The oldest known representations of the theme in Transylvania are the murals from Dârjiu
(1419) and Feliceni (after 1419), executed by members of the same workshop, which show the martyrs
cast onto the spines from the top of a tower, and not from the mountain, as also in the engraving of
the Master of the Ten Thousand Martyrs’ of c. 1450. The bishop who baptised the soldiers, identified
with Hermolaus of Nicomedia, frequently appears in the visual arts after 1349, when Hermann von
Fritzlar introduced him in his Heiligenleben version17, but Louis Réau and other authors stated that,
exceptionally, Achacius himself was represented as a bishop, being confused with the hierarch Agacius
(d. 305), or with other homonymous saints18. Ten martyrs plus Hermolaus were painted in the nave
of St. Margaret’s church in Mediaş (c. 1420), and on one of the fixed panels of the Târnava altar‑
piece (c. 1485, Sibiu, Brukenthal National Museum), in which the Crucifixion is represented in the
middle of the scene and Achacius, Eliade, Theodorus and Carterius are all individualised19. Jesus on the
Cross amongst the martyrs is marked with the side wound, similarly at Berki (1480–1490) and Šariš
(1510–1520), where he is also nimbed, while in Mlynica (1515–1520), Grodków (c. 1480–1490)20
and Gościszowice (1506–1508)21, his identity is clearly stressed through the acronym INRI.
Two murals painted around 1500, were partially uncovered in Transylvania, in the neigh‑
bouring parish churches of Boian (Sibiu district) and Tătârlaua (Alba district), some 13 km apart;
they are clearly painted by the same workshop on the northern wall of the choir in both churches, in
a predominantly linear manner and in an identical colour-scheme, dominated by copper green. The
image from Boian22 appears in the company of St. Sophia with her three daughters and St. Paul the
Hermit fed by the raven, as I first recorded in 201423.
The representation of the Ten Thousands Martyrs on Mount Ararat painted inside the Franciscan
church from Sibiu is of a different, more descriptive composition, and belongs to the latest period of
Central European medieval art, being executed after 1500 on the model of Albrecht Dürer’s engraving
of 1496–1497 (B. 117), used by the master himself, in reverse, for his „densely populated” and
„spatially complex” painting of 1508 (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Musem)24. The scheme was adapted in
17
Erzbischof Hermolaus was later mentioned in Günther Zainer‘s Heiligenleben, Augsburg (1472) and in Bamberger
Vollbreviers (1484). Christoph Stöcker, Dürer, Celtis und der falsche Bischof Achatius. Zur Ikonographie von Dürers Marter der
Zehntausend, in Artibus et Historiae, 5, 9, 1984, pp. 127–129, 135–136.
18
Louis Réau, Iconographie., III, I, p. 1704; Fedja Anzelewsky, Albrecht Dürer: das malerische Werk, 1991, 1, pp. 75
–77; Achacius of Melitene Bishop (d. 251), LCI, 5, p. 15.
19
In Dürer’s painting (1508), Achacius wearing the crown of thorns is on the cross and not Jesus, in Gallego’s work
(after 1493) the soldiers are crucified, in Jean Bourdichon’s Livre d’ Heures of Anne de Bretagne (1503–1508, BNF, 177v),
ten soldiers are crucified, the other five being killed by the thorns.
20
Robert Suckale, Ein Tuchleinbild der Achatiusmarter aus der Nachfolge des Meisters von St. Lambrecht, in Galeria
–Ročenka Slovenskej narodnej galerie v Bratislave 2001, Fig. 7. In this developed composition, Mary, John the Evangelist, St.
Pope Gregory’s Mass, and donors are included.
21
Emese Sarkadi Nagy, Local Workshops – Foreign Connections. Late Medieval Altarpieces from Transylvania,
Ostfildern, 2012, Fig. I.92.
22
Achacius with the princely hat and Hermolaus with the mitre, reading from a book, were mentioned by Agnes
N. Toth, Hozzaszolasok a Tizezer vertanu ikonografiajahoz. Egy puspok a martirok koreben, in Terezia Kerny – Anna Tüskés
(Eds.), Omnis creatura significans: tanulmányok Prokopp Mária 70. születésnapjára, Budapest, 2009, p. 140.
23
Dana Jenei, Thèmes iconographiques et images dévotionelles dans la peinture murale médiévale tardive de Transylvanie
(deuxieme parti du XVe siecle – premier quart du XVIe siecle), in Revue Roumaine d’Histoire de l’Art. Serie Beaux-Arts, 51,
2014, pp. 31–32, Fig. 22; eadem, Goticul, pp. 77 and 100, Fig. 117–118.
24
Paul M. Bacon, Humanism in Wittenberg: Frederick the Wise, Konrad Celtis, and Albrecht Dürer’s 1508 Martyrdom
of the Ten Thousand Christians, in Konsthistorisktidskrift, 2013, 82, 1, pp. 3–5.
 Murals Discovered in the Choir of the Present Franciscan Church of Sibiu 35

the St. John’s altarpiece in Hildesheim (c. 1500, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum), and by Erasmus
Grasser (1506, Reichsdorf, Filialkirche St. Leonhard), Hans Raphon (1512, Heiligenstadt, Katholische
Pfarrkirche Sankt Marien), Meister IS mit der Schaufel (c. 1515, Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle),
Niklaus Manuel Deutsch (1516–1517, Bern, Kunstmuseum), in the Ilbenstadt retable (c. 1525), at
Simon Bening (c. 1535) and Hans Sebald Beham (c. 1540). Among all these examples, the image from
Sibiu is unique in the symmetry of its composition, laterally closed by two rocks, on the top of which
the action in the distance is developed. On the left upper side, following the model, several mercenaries
push the naked Christian soldiers into the abyss, one of them using a spike. Only two bodies are shown
falling down, the scheme being simplified by the master of Sibiu, who also invented the right upper
part, with a plateau on which the soldiers are stripped and crucified in their loincloths like Jesus, in
front of a cluster of crosses. Detached from the group, a kneeling executioner pierces the arm of another
cross with a carpenter’s drill, a detail also taken from Christ’s Passion that the Martyrdom of the Ten
Thousand re-enacts. In Dürer’s engraving, a torturer uses a similar tool to kill a bishop lying on the
ground25. The mercenaries wear typical Landsknecht costume, vests and red-yellow puffed trousers with
zigzag patterns, parti-coloured hose in red and blue or with vertical grey-black stripes.
In the lower section, the dead Achacius, his head back, kneels alone amidst the bleeding bodies of
the Christian soldiers which lie on the ground, impaled by thorns26. The figure of the Roman Emperor
Hadrian represented in Dürer’s engraving to the left, with the Persian king Sapor in Ottoman clothes,
alluding to the Turkish threat to European Christendom27, is here covered by a pilaster attached to the
wall, less than a half of his figure being visible. According to the graphic source, in the second plane of
this hidden area, the martyrs climbing the cliff would have been represented.
Above them all, in response to the martyrs’ prayers, Christ shows himself, painted in a round
radiant yellow-whitish mandorla. The details of his half-length figure, wearing the red mantle of the
Resurrection and coming out of a cloud, as in Hans Raphon’s painting, are completely lost.

*
The pendant of St. Achacius’ Ten Thousand soldiers in Sibiu is represented by St. Ursula’s Eleven
Thousand virgins, slaughtered by the Huns. The most well-known variant of this widespread “medieval
religious novel” belongs to Jacobus Voragine’s Legenda aurea28. Ursula, one of the seven Holy Martyrs
mentioned in the Canon of the Catholic Liturgy was, according to the twelfth-century chronicler
Geoffrey of Monmouth, the daughter of the King of Britain and before marriage made a pilgrimage
to Rome, being accompanied by her future husband, and ten noble maidens, each one followed by a
retinue of one thousand virgins, and many courtiers. The legend recounts that on their return, they
25
Fedja Anzelewsky, op. cit. pp. 75–77, considers the bishop in Dürer’s Martyrdom of Ten Thousand as being St.
Leodegar, but in other contexts he might be Hermolaus, Adrianus or Januarius as well.
26
The first figure in the foreground reminds the silhouette of S. Achatius in Albrecht Aldorfer’s woodcut, comprising
the artist’s monogram. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/428954.
27
Paul M. Bacon, op. cit., p. 19, also shows that „Sapor in contemporary Ottoman dress is a thirteenth-century
Dominican insertion into the legend”.
28
Louis Réau, Iconographie, III, III, p. 1297. The earliest hagiographic source is the so-called Clematius inscription
on a fifth century Roman stone plaque in Köln. Hundreds of skeletons, considered to be Ursula’s and her companions’
were discovered at Ager ursulanus in 1155 and 1164. Kristin Hoefener, St Ursula’s Cult and its Manifestation in Liturgy,
in James Robinson and Lloyd de Beer with Anna Harnden (Eds.), Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and
Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period, London 2014, p. 44. The number of martyrs XI M V was interpreted as XI Martyres
Virgines or XI Milium Virgines.
36 Dana Jenei

were all massacred by Attila’s Huns under the walls of Cologne. Details and characters were added to
the narrative by the visions of the mystic Elisabeth von Schönau (c. 1157–1158, Liber Revelationum)
and by Theoderich von Deutz (c. 1164, Revelationes titulorum vel nominum sanctorum martirium et
sanctaram virginum – Ursula reginae virginum), whilst Hildegard von Bingen composed hymns to the
virginum undecim milium29. The legend spread throughout Western Europe in the monastic milieu,
while in Venice a school for orphans under the spiritual patronage of the saint was founded in 1300,
and the Order of the Ursulines was constituted in 1535 by St. Angela de Merici, mainly dedicated to
the education of young girls.
The theme was frequently represented in medieval fine arts, the most famous representations
being painted by Hans Memling (1489), Vittore Carpaccio (1498) and the Master of the Cologne
Legend of St. Ursula (c. 1500). Certain details, reiterated in later representations, appeared earlier
on the main altar of the Holy Cross Cathedral in Rottweil (1440, Landesmuseum, Württemberg
Stuttgart) or at Hans Siebenbürger in the Behaim-Retabel predella (c. 1463), in the panel achieved
for the Cistercian Lilienfeld monastery (c. 1480, Wien, Österreichische Galerie im Belvedere), and
amongst some of his followers30.
In Transylvania, the saint with her attribute, the arrow, is painted among the Virgin Martyrs on
the vault of the church choir of Mălâncrav (c. 1400), within the seven companions of St. Mary inside
the church of St. Michael in Cluj (c. 1430) and in Sighișoara (c. 1460–1470), framing the Crucifixion
in the northern wall of the choir, together with St. Barbara, a figure discovered by the restoration works
of 1995–2004, which I first reported in my study dedicated to the paintings of the Church “on the
Hill”, published in 2004–200531. In its immediate vicinity, but hidden by the stalls, there is an older
image, painted by the author of the superposed scenes from the entrance in the church (after 1370),
which hypothetically represents the episode of St. Ursula and her companions encountered by Pope
Cyriacus in Rome, a scene that also appears at Sic (Cluj district), in the southern chapel of the church,
where episodes of the cycle were represented (c. 1380)32.
All these examples are much earlier than the painting in Sibiu, where Passio Ursulae with
Pope Cyriacus, Cardinal Vincentius, a Bishop – Simplicius, Maurice, Pantulus or Jacobus, and probably
Ethereus, her future husband, were depicted in the ship. The identities of the characters were mystically
revealed to Elisabeth von Schönau33, mentioned by Voragine, and written by Hans Burgkmair on
scrolls in his panel painted for the Dominican Monastery in Augsburg (1504, Staatsgalerie Altdeutsche
Meister). On the left of the image, the prince of the Huns, Attila (Julian in Voragine), with a mace on
his shoulder, co-ordinates the massacre, after Ursula’s refusal of his marriage request. He stands with
his henchmen behind two spearmen, who seems to kill Euthereus, and an archer, who draws his bow to
shoot an arrow into the centre of the ship, where Ursula is usually represented, but this area is covered
29
Ibidem, p. 44–45.
30
Robert Sukale, Der Maler, Fig. 3–5, 6 and 20.
31
Dana Jenei, Pictura murală a bisericii „din Deal” din Sighișoara, in Ars Transsilvaniae XIV–XV, 2004–2005, p. 109.
Anna Kónya, who republished some of my findings, sometimes with the imagistic analogies included, erroneously dates
the painting 1483, since its centre was destroyed by the installation of the tabernacle in the last phase of construction from
1483. She also notes that St. Magdalene, painted later in the upper part of the same wall, has an inscription partially red,
which in fact is completely red, as I clearly wrote in 2004–2005: S. MARIA MAGDALENA.1484. Anna Kónya, Eucharistic
References in the Representations of Saints: a Case Study of Late Gothic Wall Paintings in Transylvania, in AHA, 2017, p. 113,
notes 114 and 124.
32
Vasile Drăguţ, Iconografia picturilor murale gotice din Transilvania, în PVAR, II, 1972, p. 81.
33
Marcelle Thiébaux, The Writings of Medieval Women. An Anthology, New York, 1994, pp. 369–382.
 Murals Discovered in the Choir of the Present Franciscan Church of Sibiu 37

by a later pilaster. A slaughtered virgin has fallen over the side of the ship, her neck pierced by an
arrow, as in the altarpiece from Berki, in Slovakia (1480–1490, Budapest, Magyar Nemzety Galéria).
This redundant figure, grabbed by the hair by a tormentor who raises his sword to behead her, appears
in the illustration of Jacobus Voragine’s Legenda aurea from Augsburg (1471), in the Mlynica retable,
in Slovakia (c. 1515) and, in Transylvania, with certain alterations, at Beia – in reverse (1513) and
Daia – in the developed variant of the murals from the northern wall of the choir (before 1516)34.
In the lower part, to the right, a Hun seated among dead bodies, takes an arrow from the back of his
belt with one hand and keeps his bow with the other in order to shoot, while in the centre, a lank
executioner wearing a net-like hair-bonnet (characteristic of the type which begins with Wolgemut
and Dürer) turns in an almost impossible pirouette to behead the only nimbed maiden in the whole
image, garbed in red, who kneels together with other virgins in prayer and, maybe, a donor in front
of them. For comparison, in the St. Albans Chronicle (late fifteenth century, Lambeth Palace Library,
MS 6 f. 34.r), all the virgins are nimbed and beheaded, none of them being shot with arrows, whilst
in the Bruges Legend of St. Ursula (c. 1485, Groeningemuseum), no character is nimbed, neither
the crowned saint in the ship, nor the maiden beheaded in the foreground, the praying donors being
represented in a separate panel. At Sibiu, the model would have had either such a complex scheme (but
the figures on the different planes are not presented in perspective), or two different patterns, vertically
juxtaposed: one for the upper part, with the common motif of St. Ursula’s ship, similar to the images
derived from illustrations of Voragine’s Legenda Aurea, and the other, for the lower section, same as
Hans Pleydenwurf ’s martyrdom scene (St. Catherine, 1465), or that of the Master of the Life of the
Virgin (St. Columba, c. 1460–1480) and Hans Egkel’s (St. Catherine, c. 1475–1485), with the saint
wearing a red kirtle lined in dark fur and with white sleeves.
The mass martyrdoms of Achacius’s and Ursula’s companies at Sibiu are separated by a group of
sainted bishops arranged under an arch in anse-de-panier with carpets on parapets in the background,
details deriving from Netherlandish tradition via German art. As the painting was destroyed by the
alteration of the architecture and partially covered by a pilaster, only three of the four saints could
be identified: Valentine (blessing the sick child suffering from mal caduc, and holding a monstrance
in his hand)35, Nicholas (with the three money bags with which he saved the poor girls) and, after
the attributes given by Louis Réau, une loutre and le feu follet diabolique, perhaps Cuthbert of
Lindisfarne36. The same saint bishop stands alongside Valentine on the outside wing of the altarpiece
from Bruiu37, a painting also assigned to a Sibiu workshop38.
34
The detail is also present in Hans Siebenbürger’s earlier works (Robert Sukale, Der Maler, pp. 367–370) and at his
followers, as the author of the panel from Cebuleac collection, published by Emese Nagy Sarkadi, op. cit., p. 218. For Daia,
see Emese Nagy Sarkadi, cited by Anna Tüskés in, Szent Orsolya tisztelete a középkori Magyarországon: legendák, ereklyék,
oltárok, in Opus Mixtum 3, 2014, p. 37, and Anna Kónya, op. cit., p. 101.
35
Ibidem, p. 93. The source is Lucas Cranach’s engraving from the Wittenberger Heiltumsbuch (1509).
36
Louis Réau, Iconographie, III, III, p. 357. On the continent, an early copy of his life was owned by the archbishop
of Mainz (689), and a chapel was dedicated to him at Fulda (819). David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints,
Oxford, 1979, p. 95. As in the case of King Oswald, the other Northumbrian saint painted in Transylvania, Cuthbert’s
representation whould have been mediated by Germany. In the English medieval art, Cuthbert is often shown holding
Oswald’s head, which was buried in his grave. King Oswald’s images were painted in Transylvania inside the churches of
Ighis (Sibiu district) and Sic (Cluj district). Dana Jenei, The Newly Discovered Murals inside the Church of Virgin Mary at
Ighișu Nou, Sibiu County, in Revue Roumaine d’Histoire de l’Art. Serie Beaux Arts, Bucarest, 2016, p. 53.
37
Dana Jenei, Goticul, p. 144.
38
Ciprian Firea, Arta polipticelor medievale din Transilvania (1450–1550), Ph.D. dissertation, Cluj-Napoca, 2010,
II, p. 77. Here the background is also decorated with the already mentioned carpets on parapets.
38 Dana Jenei

The last image in the upper section of the Franciscan church in Sibiu is larger than the other
scenes, its importance being highlighted by the fact that it extends into both registers. It has a red
border and a scroll at the top, with the traces of an inscription in Gothic letters, now illegible, while the
lower part was destroyed by the new entrance to the cloister in the eighteenth century. The rare scene
of Jesus interceding before God the Father is represented here, developed from the devotional motif
of the Vir dolorum among angels bearing the Arma Christi, as seen in the painting discovered on the
façade of the Parish House in Sibiu, made after the Master E.S.’s engraving, which I first mentioned
in 200939. God the Father, a half-length figure, looms out of a cloud with the outspread wings of the
nimbed dove of the Holy Spirit before him, holding the imperial globe and blessing Jesus, who seems
to show his wounds, though only the head and the right hand of his figure are preserved. The angels
carry the sponge with vinegar on the hyssop, the spear, the column and the nails, the crown of thorns is
worn by Christ, while the Cross might have been represented near him, in the lacunar area. Ambrosius
Holbein’s work, described in a later inventory as “ein krützgeter Christus sambt Got dem vater vnd viel
engeln” (c. 1515, Basel, Kunstmuseum)40, presents similar elements, with Jesus vir dolorum sitting on
the rainbow and his feet on the globe, which might also have been represented in the missing part from
Sibiu, where – below, on the right side of the new window above the entrance to the cloister – are also
preserved the figures of two nimbed female saints wearing Wulsthauben and standing in prayer.
A group of martyred saints was painted in the inferior register. Laurence with the grill, and
Andrew with the X cross, are followed by four other sacred figures represented in a separate frame,
mostly destroyed and covered by a later pilaster; the first one, wearing secular garments and a stick,
could be St. Jacob the Greater, while the last one, in clerical vestments, reads from the open book that
he holds in his right hand. This image has a Renaissance frame of green laurel leaves with rosettes in
the corners, as do the murals from Râșnov (1500) 41, and the motifs similarly rendered on the cassette
wooden ceiling from Adămuș (1526), also executed in a Sibiu workshop (Budapest, Szépművészeti
Múzeum) 42.
The Crucifixion is the image that concludes the representations of the lower register to the east,
being surrounded by a vegetal frame with elongated tulips in red, white and green. Christ on the Cross
is represented between Mary and John the Evangelist, while a kneeling donor is recommended by her
spiritual patron, a female saint with a green robe and a white veil, the figure being barely perceptible.
The donor, represented in profile, seems to be a young, unmarried woman, bare headed and with hair
simply arranged, fastened and probably braided, wearing a red large kirtle with a fashionable Gollar
and white sleeves with hanging veils attached to the cuffs.
39
Dana Jenei, Iconographical Problems of the Late Medieval Wall Painting in Transylvania, at Regionális és európai
kapcsolatok Kelet-Közép Európa Középkorifalfestéazetében, Balatonfüred, 2009; eadem Renașterea transilvăneană – identitate
culturală în context european, București, 2013, p.  69, Fig.  1.55–1.56; eadem, Contribuition to the Transylvanian Panel
Painting at the end of the fifteenth century, in Brukenthal. Acta Musei, VIII. 2, 2013, p. 221, Fig. 20–21; eadem, Goticul,
Fig. 101–102, p. 66.
40
http://sammlungonline.kunstmuseumbasel.ch/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultDetailView/result.inline.
list.t1.collection_list.$TspTitleLink.link&sp=13&sp=Sartist&sp=SfilterDefinition&sp=0&sp=0&sp=1&sp=SdetailView
&sp=752&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=T&sp=0&sp=SdetailList&sp=0&sp=F&sp=Scollection&sp=l958. In the inventory of
1585–1587, Basilius Amerbach also notes that the painting was modelled after Albrecht Dürer. Jochen Sander, Hans
Holbein d. J. – Tafelmaler in Basel. 1515–1532, München, 2005, p. 71. The figure of Christ is taken from the 1511 title
woodcut of Dürer’s Grosser Passion (B. 4).
41
Dana Jenei, The Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, painted inside St. Matthias Church in Râșnov, in
SCIAP-AP, 2014, p. 11.
42
Eadem, Renașterea Transilvăneană-identitate culturală în context European, București, 2013, p. 88.
 Murals Discovered in the Choir of the Present Franciscan Church of Sibiu 39

A monogram with the letters imbricated in the characteristic manner of the time, is painted
hidden in a bean of the lateral frame decoration. I have interpreted this monogram as “hEnRI[cus]
PI[cto]R”43, an artist mentioned in the City Count Register of Sibiu between 1478–150844, which
records only one work of his, a banner made to the order of the Magistrate45. Henricus’ name was also
indirectly mentioned, however, in the city’s Confraternity of St. John in 150846, as were his probably
older guild colleagues, Bartholomeus (1459–1503/1508) and Velten (1469–1508)47, to which gener‑
ation of artists he nevertheless belongs.

*
The murals from the choir of the present Franciscan church of Sibiu, near which stands the
retable of Bruiu, mark the end of the Late Gothic tradition in Sibiu, around 1515. The paintings here
ascribed to Henricus display characteristics as the red-green complementary contrast, precise black
contours (as seen in the features of St. Nicholas, for example), and graphically superposed details,
of which only a few have survived, such as St. John the Evangelist’s curls in the Crucifixion, the
decoration of the dress of the virgin struck by the arrow in Ursula’s martyrdom, or the garments of the
bishops, with delicate traces of the brocade motifs on the whitish pluvial of the anonymous one. The
Martyrdom of the Eleven Thousands Virgins is composed bi-dimensionally, the figures being of the
same size both in the foreground and in the distance, due to the suggested use of two different juxta‑
posed graphic sources, as I have hypothesized above. The base of St. Valentine’s monstrance, rendered
in perspective, is incorrectly drawn. The shapes are clearly delimited, as the mercenaries’ figures in the
upper part of the Ten Thousand Martyrs scene, while in its lower part, the painting seems to be the
work of a different artist, from the new generation of painters, who transposed the figures of Dürer’s
engraving into the artistic style of the Renaissance Danube School. The naked bodies of the dead
Christian soldiers are pictorially rendered in superposed layers of glacis and tone sur tone modelling in
perspective, in successive depth-planes. The temperate colours and diluted contours also characterise
the image of the Vir dolorum and in part the representations of the lower register, the appearance of a
“negative painting” being caused by the loss of the accents painted with a binder, as the restorers have
identified.

*
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the chronicler Georg Soterius (1673–1728) noted
that the Franciscans took over the church of the Dominican nuns48, dedicated to St. Magdalene,
first documented in 1502, endowed by the municipality with a rent in 1506, inhabited by 24 sisters
in 1510, and having Gaspar of Rupea as confessor in 152449, but in the first part of the twentieth

43
Eadem, Goticul, p. 77.
44
Ciprian Firea, op. cit., I, p. 152.
45
Quellen zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens aus sächsischen Archiven, I, Hermannstadt (1880), I, p. 308.
46
„Sigismund sneiderin Heinrich Molers swiger”. Franz Zimmermann, Das Register der Johannes-Bruderschaft, in
Archiv des Vereins, XVI, 1881, p. 379:
47
Ibidem. „Katherina dy Barthelmes molerin; Velten Moler cum uxore Ursula” (1508).
48
Georg Soterius, Cibinium. Eine Beschreibung Hermannstadts vom Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts, Köln, 2006, p.31.
Templum Monialium, quo est apud Dominicanorum Coenobium, nuper Franciscanis concessum.
49
Mihaela Sanda Salontai, Mănăstiri dominicane din Transilvania, Cluj-Napoca, 2000, pp. 224–227.
40 Dana Jenei

century, Michael Thalgot (1933) and Arnold Pankratz (1935), identified the monastery as the Clarisse
Nunnery, documented in 1425, 1497 and 150750.
The murals recently discovered and restored in the choir of the present Franciscan church in
Sibiu, though seriously affected by the construction works of the beginning of the eighteenth century
and by the loss of the superposed details, are important for the knowledge of Transylvanian art at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, when the new Renaissance style superseded the Late Gothic. The
Sibiu ensemble is of indisputable historical value and, not least, on account of the rare iconographical
themes represented, unique in the voivodship, such as Christ interceding before God the Father, or
the pendant themes of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and Ten Thousand Christian Soldiers (the latter
adapted after Dürer’s engraving of 1496–1497), an association that recalls the iconography of the
earlier painting on the back of the Behaim predella, assigned to Johannes Siebenbürger and executed
for St. Catherine’s Church in Nuremberg, a Dominican Nunnery as well51.

50
Erich Michael Thalgott, Hermannstadt. Die baugeschchtlige Entwicklung einer siebenbürgischen Stadt, Hermannstadt,
1933, p. 76; Arnold Pankratz, op. cit., p. 43; Alexandru Avram, Topografia monumentelor din Transilvania, 5.1.1. Municipiul
Sibiu. Centrul istoric, 1999, Köln, p. 87–88; Nicolae Sabău, op.cit., p. 237; Dana Jenei, Goticul, p. 77.
51
Robert Sukale, Der Maler, p. 367. St. Ursula was painted by Hans Burgkmair in 1504 for the Dominican Nunnery
in Augsburg, too.
 Murals Discovered in the Choir of the Present Franciscan Church of Sibiu 41

1. General view of the southern wall of the choir in the Franciscan church of Sibiu.

3. Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand, detail, Dârjiu

(Harghita district), the Unitarian church, 1419.

2. Monstrance painted in trompe l’oeil, Sibiu, the

choir of the Franciscan church, northern wall.
42 Dana Jenei

4. Martyrdom of the Ten

Thousand, Mediaş, the
Evanghelical church, c. 1420.

5. Master of the Martyrdom of the

Ten Thousand, engraving, c. 1450,
https://skd-online-collection.skd.
museum/Details/Index/959813.
 Murals Discovered in the Choir of the Present Franciscan Church of Sibiu 43

6. Martyrdom of 7. Martyrdom of
the Ten Thousand, the Ten Thousand,
Târnava Retable, Tătârlaua (Alba
c. 1485, Sibiu, district), the
Brukenthal Evanghelical church,
Museum. around 1500, the
workshop of the
Master of Boian.

8. Martyrdom of the
Ten Thousand, Boian
(Sibiu district), the
Evanghelical church,
around 1500.
44 Dana Jenei

9. Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand, Albrecht Dürer, engraving, 1496–1497 (B. 117).
 Murals Discovered in the Choir of the Present Franciscan Church of Sibiu 45

10. Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand, Sibiu, the choir

of the Franciscan church, southern wall.

11. St. Ursula’s Martyrdom, Sibiu, the choir of the Franciscan church, southern wall.
46 Dana Jenei

12. Jesus
interceding before
God the Father,
Sibiu, the choir
of the Franciscan
church,
Southern wall.

13. Saints
Bishops, Sibiu,
the choir of
the Franciscan
church,
southern wall.
 Murals Discovered in the Choir of the Present Franciscan Church of Sibiu 47

14. Martyrs and saints,

Sibiu, the choir of the
Franciscan church,
southern wall.

15. Crucifixion with

donor, Sibiu, the choir
of the Franciscan church,
southern wall.
48 Dana Jenei

16. Donor, Sibiu, the choir of the 17. Monogram of the presumed author of
Franciscan church, southern wall. the ensemble, “hEnRI[cus] PI[cto]R”, Sibiu,
the choir of the Franciscan church.