Dolmány (undercoat) from the wardrobe of Palatine Pál Esterházy

The dolman was a typical waistcoat of the Hungarian male costume worn right over the shirt and under the mente, but it could be worn without the mente, too. The once cherry-red, now red satin is completely covered with a strongly raised lace pattern of large baroque tendrils, flowers and leaves embroidered in metal thread. The oblique “shako” cut of the coat in front disrupts the accurately elaborate symmetry of the peculiar decoration. The hooks on the chest consist of white hands holding half-hearts, with whole hearts at the other end on which white doves with gold wings are sitting. When hooked up, the two half hearts unite and the beaks of the doves touch. The “flapped” sleeves reaching over the hand are also fastened with similar but simpler pairs of hooks. On the basis of the dolman colour and the symbols of the hook motifs a mid-19th century inventory defined it as the wedding dolman of Palatine Miklós Esterházy (1583–1645) worn at his wedding with Orsolya Dersffy (1580–1619) in 1612 or with Krisztina Nyary (1604–1641) in 1624. This is, however, contradicted by the size, cut and ornamentation of the rest of the dolmans in the treasury, on the basis of which it can be dated to the second half of the 17th century. It is therefore more probable that it was worn by Pál Esterházy (1635–1713), Miklós Esterházy’s son born to his second wife, at his second wedding in 1682. The garment owes its exquisiteness to the lace pattern of metal thread covering the dolman surface and the finely elaborated hooks. It was restored by Mrs Sándor Borsi in 1962 and Katalin E. Nagy in 2006.