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In 1541 Buda Castle, a prospering seat of royal power as well as a centre of Renaissance art and Humanist culture, was captured by the Turks. The country was split into three parts: the Kingdom of Hungary in the west and north; the Principality of Transylvania; and the remaining parts under Turkish suzerainty. After a period of decline, art life, which had earlier been centred around the royal court, began to show signs of recovery in the early 17th century, primarily as a result of the art patronage of the bourgeoisie and the Renaissance courts of the aristocracy. Then, with the spreading of the Baroque style by foreign masters under the patronage of the Church, Hungarian art once again linked up with the mainstream of European art.
Alongside the portraits of St. Ladislas and St. Emericus, the panel painting made around 1600 and showing "St. Stephen" was, perhaps, originally part of an extensive series featuring Hungarian kings. On this occasion St. Stephen, similarly to St. Ladislas, was represented as a sovereign an a historical personality. His throne, which is decorated with tapestry and has a capricious design, is painted in the Mannerist style, while the insignias in the hand, as well as the crown of Hungarian deported by angels, are rather accurate depictions of the coronation insignias in line with the concept of the period. St. Stephen - just like his son in the other painting - is dressed in the Hungarian attire typically worn in the late 16th and the early 17th centuries, and reflect the national sentiments associated with his person.
Although composition analogies between these paintings and the corresponding sheets of a series of copper-plate etchings entitled Mausoleum, made in Prague in the 1610s, cannot be found, a related compositional approach and certain similarities in the details suggest some connection between them. The closest stylistic analogies of these pictures, executed with the meticulousness of miniature painting, can be found in heraldic representations.
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