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These three life-size statues were originally placed high on the ridge of the north transept of St. Elisabeth's Church in Kassa. Supported by brackets, they were spaced at equal distance across the width of the transept. St. Stephen stood on the left, St. Ladislas a little higher in the centre, and St. Emeric on the right. A photograph from the last century clearly shows the slender pinnacles which rose above them. The statues were removed from their original position during the reconstruction of the cathedral in 1859-60 and replaced by new ones.
Although the usual attributes are lacking, the facial types fully correspond with traditional representations of the saintly Hungarian kings generally portrayed together. The aged, bearded St. Stephen probably held in his right hand a sceptre, the mark of which is still discernible; the orb in his left hand and the lower part of his crown have survived intact. An old drawing shows the king standing with his legs crossed, in the same way as St. Ladislas. The younger king, St. Ladislas, is also clad in armour below which we can see the lower part of a mail shirt. The king may have held a battle-axe in his right hand while in his left hand there is still the fragment of an orb. The youngest royal figure, prince St. Emeric, has a rather girlish face and wears a loose cloak with a broad collar. His tilted head and the crosswise curving line of his cloak enhance the dance-like posture characteristic of all three statues.
Similar representations of saintly Hungarian kings were made for the high altar in Szepeshely in the 1470s; the contemporary carved wooden statues on the superstructure of the high altar in Kassa were also analogous in composition. Among the remains now in the Gallery the carvings of St. Stephen and St. Ladislas from Mateóc, are comparable in respect of posture and armour to the Kassa figures. St. Emeric's cloak, however, is not so rich in folds as that of its Kassa counterpart; it is rather dominated by an asymmetric arrangement of large curves similar to those found on the sepulchre of Casimir Jagiello made by Veit Stoss in the 1490s. The dancelike posture, which in the 1480s became exaggerated to the grotesque, can be traced back to Nikolaus Gerhaert. Both Stoss and the sculpture in Kassa had strong connections with Gerhaert's art earlier too.
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