Overcoat (mente) - from the wardrobe of István Esterházy

Italian velvet, Hungarian tailoring and button-knitting work. Cut straight down to waist, curves outward at hips, bells out downwards, skirt reaches to beneath knee. Shoulders cut straight, a slot left for arm. Sleeve slightly tapers, “pipe sleeve” reaching to bottom of skirt. Below waist there is an opening for sword hilt. Curved stand-up collar. Front fastens with twelve buttons and loops with frogging. Pattern is a row of gold hooked-end rosettes on light green ground. On the right are large egg-shaped buttons with red-gold rhombus mesh woven on wooden form. The pattern is similar to the frogging on the purple pelisse in the Esterházy collection, but of a different colour (IM, inv. no: 52.2771). Lajos Zoltai has discovered analogous pieces in the old Dobozi graveyard in Debrecen, and there are others among the work of Rozsnyó button-knitters the vogue is recorded in numerous portraits. The cut of the pelisse dates it to the first half of the seventeenth century. It is in this pelisse, originally lined with lynx fur, that we see István Esterházy in a portrait from the ancestors’ gallery in Fraknó. The inventory taken upon his death in 1641 has the first written record of the dolman, and it can also be traced in the later inventories.