First edition of this handsome work on the Hungarian monarchy with a wonderful series of fifty-nine full-length heraldic portraits of kings and nobles of Hungary, sometimes with detailed views in the background of battles, landscapes, or cities. The text contains laudatory poetry for past kings and leaders, in both German and Latin. Ferencz III, Count de Nádasdy, was a prominent nobleman and patriotic Hungarian statesman who opposed the despotic policies of the Emperor Leopold. Unjustly condemned for conspiring against Leopold, he was beheaded in 1671. In this book, which is dedicated to the Hungarian nobility, he had promoted the idea of an independent Hungarian monarchy. The unsigned engravings, here in notably fine and dark impressions, are of great quality. Most of them originated in a series commissioned in the 1620s by Lőrinc Ferenczffy, and were subsequently acquired by Nádasdy, who expanded the series and commissioned new texts from the Jesuit scholar Nicolaus Avancini.

First edition of this handsome work on the Hungarian monarchy with a wonderful series of fifty-nine full-length heraldic portraits of kings and nobles of Hungary, sometimes with detailed views in the background of battles, landscapes, or cities. The text contains laudatory poetry for past kings and leaders, in both German and Latin. Ferencz III, Count de Nádasdy, was a prominent nobleman and patriotic Hungarian statesman who opposed the despotic policies of the Emperor Leopold. Unjustly condemned for conspiring against Leopold, he was beheaded in 1671. In this book, which is dedicated to the Hungarian nobility, he had promoted the idea of an independent Hungarian monarchy. The unsigned engravings, here in notably fine and dark impressions, are of great quality. Most of them originated in a series commissioned in the 1620s by Lőrinc Ferenczffy, and were subsequently acquired by Nádasdy, who expanded the series and commissioned new texts from the Jesuit scholar Nicolaus Avancini.

Further editions of the work appeared in 1667 and 1758, and a modern critical edition was published in Budapest in 1991.

The book is rare on the market, with just one poor copy recorded at public sale since 1986.