Jewelry from the Hall Convent in the Tyrol
The MAK collection contains two pearl-encrusted crowns intended for communion
wafer cups, so-called ciboria, that were once much more richly decorated. The apertures visible today used to be filled with an abundance of rosettes formed of gold and precious jewels, some of which had originally adorned the bridal dress of the Archduchess Maria Christierna (1574–1621). A full-length portrait of this daughter of Charles II, Archduke of Inner Austria, shows the dress thus bejeweled.
Archduchess Maria Christierna (1574-1621) in her wedding dress, daughter of Charles II of Inner Austria, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Inv. No. Gemäldegalerie 3300, ©KHM-Museumsverband, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Maria Christierna married Sigismund Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, in 1595. It was an unhappy marriage that remained unconsummated and ended four years later in divorce. In 1607, Maria Christierna and her sister entered the “Royal Endowment for Noble Ladies” in Hall in the Tyrol, whose director she became from 1612 until her death. The jewelry the sisters brought to their new home was used in the mid-17th century to create two ciborium crowns and a chalice—all three objects were purchased by the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (today’s MAK) in 1880. There the rosettes were taken out to examine them more closely, revealing that they had been manufactured in Klausenburg in Transylvania, in Spain, and in the royal workshops of Prague and Munich. The pearl crowns with their precious jewels bear impressive witness to the practice of assigning a religious significance to such possessions after the owners had renounced all worldly vanities.
(Anne-Katrin Rossberg, 2025)
