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An early photograph of this statue shows a crown on the saint's head and an orb in his left hand. On account of the battle-axe - originally held in the right hand - the saint was identified as St. Ladislas when first mentioned in the literature. The facial type is in keeping with the traditional representation of the royal knights in medieval Hungary. From the downward cast of the eyes turned slightly to the right, the thickset figure and the frontal view emphasized by the flowing robes, it would seem that the carving must have stood on the left side of a central shrine of an altarpiece.
From the point of view of fashion and style of carving, it corresponds almost entirely with the figure of St. Sigismund on the shrine of the winged altar dating from 1430-1440 in San Sigismondo, a parish church in southern Tyrol, but there are also numerous analogous Hungarian stone statues among those unearthed in Buda Castle in 1974. The wide belt worn below the waist, the armour, the slantwise-laced jacket, also the stockings and split leather shoes, can be seen, for examples, on a large mounted figure and on a herald with a helmet in his hand. There is also a very close relationship between the face of St. Ladislas and a male head similarly found at Buda Castle: the hair, beard and moustache, and especially the wrinkles on the brow and the crow's feet in the corners under the eyes scratched into the groundcolour, are in both works represented in the same realistic manner. The narrow face and serious expression are typical features of representation of royal figures of a period when masters were endeavouring to replace ideal faces by more realistic likenesses. The difference between the drapery softly flowing from the arms and the harder lines of the jacket also demonstrates the transition between the two styles; the structure of the whole square-built figure and the proportions are early indications of the new sculptural approach of the 1440s.
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