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These kneeling statues of Pál Esterházy (1635-1713) and his wife, Orsolya Esterházy (?) (1641-1682) are considered, on the basis of their pose and gestures, sepulchral statues. Originally they were complemented by another couple of statues, that of Pál's brother Ferenc (†1683) and his wife, Kata Thököly (†1701) (Hungarian National Gallery). All four are kneeling on cushions, their look drawn to the sky, with hands joined, and in slightly bended, praying pose. The statues are composed on a frontal view. Their backs are grooved, and their feet reaching back are not perfectly carved, a sign that the statues were designed for wall-niches. Pál Esterházy is represented in somewhat historizing clothes (coat-of-arms and short shirt), with a wig, and the Order of the Golden Fleece, which he obtained in 1681. His wife wears Hungarian apparel, flowered shoulder stays, a peated-shoulder blouse, a girdle decorated with precious stones, and a necklace. Although the details of the statues, especially the soft folds of the woman's clothes and the modelling of the heads, are decorative and pleasant, the unknown sculptor, who surely was not one of the first-class masters of the period, did not manage to individualize his figures.
The statues were bought in 1849 by the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest and, according to the seller's information, they originated from Pozsony. The represented persons were identified by Mária Aggházy, according to whom the statues were made not much after 1681, and were destined for bronze foundry workshop of Balthasar Herold in Vienna. They served as cast moulds for a bronze tomb which, because of Herold's death in 1683, was never realized. On the basis of their stylistic features, Aggházy considered the master of the statues to be Johann Christian Pröbstl, a Brünn burgher since 1682, who in 1720 also executed there the model of General Souches' bronze kneeling sepulchral statue. Her hypothesis was generally adopted by art literature.
Recently discovered sources, however, somewhat modify this hypothesis. Indeed, the four wooden statues represent the Esterházy brothers (Pál and Ferenc) and their wives, and were certainly made on Pál's commission. However, they were not cast moulds, but statues for the Esterházy Mausoleum, which was connected to the cloisters of Kismaton's (Eisenstadt) Franciscan church. Although the Esterházy family had a sepulchral place of their own in Nagyszombat's (Trnava) Jesuit church built by the father of Pál, Palatine Miklós Esterházy, its crypt proved damp, so Pál Esterházy wanted to build a mausoleum in the same church, as is attested by his will of 1678. According to his plans, this was a two-level sepulchral chapel with a lower tomb-level, and an altar on each floor. The two levels were bound by a lattice window, through which the tombs at the lower level were seen from the upper one. The model for this may have been the Archduke Mausoleum in Graz, where, at the Jesuit school, Pál Esterházy began his studies. However, in the end Pál Esterházy built his family mausoleum not in Nagyszombat, but in residence of his estates, in Kismarton's Franciscan church. He himself was buried here. Although the crypt was completely rebuilt in 1856-57 when it obtained its current forms, its previous appearance can be reconstructed on the basis of a detailed description of the interior from 1835-36.
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