The Legend of Saint George in Jindřichův Hradec (Neuhaus) and the Problem of Ambivalence in Courtly Culture 191 I The narrative, running in two bands from left to right on each wall, was organised in sequences of several thematically related images, which presented the audience with complex messages.10 Occasionally, the scenes positioned above each other generate more complex messages. Corresponding with the order of the sequences and their most important topics, the analytical part of this article is structured in three parts which correspond with the most important messages of the cycle. The Hradec cycle is not a mechanical survival or revival of the oldest legends. Almost all the motifs in this painted legend are to be found in the old Czech legend about the saint, tentatively dated to the period shortly after the pictorial cycle (1340–1360).11 Individual scenes of the legend are explained by inscriptions in contemporary German (Austro-Bavarian) dialect, located above the images.12 A traditional iconographical reading of the images together with a text, written in a manuscript, is not yet completely possible, since the source text has not yet been clearly identified. The ambivalences of the introductory sequence At the beginning of the cycle, the pagan king Dacian sends a messenger with a letter to the princes (the inscription: “hie sent dacia[n] brief nach fuerst[en]”. – Fig. 1, beginning of the narrative top left). The king sits on a covered stool in such a way that his crowned head is approximately on the same level as the head of the messenger, who stands in front of him and takes the sealed letter. The focused gazes and raised index fingers of the two men betray the intensity of their communication. Similar gestures are repeated several times in the cycle, possibly with different functions. In the second scene, the messenger delivers the letter to three crowned personages who are seated next to each other (“hie pringt d[er] bot den brief den fuerst[en]”).13 Two of them look at each other with almost the same expression, possibly indicating surprise. The seated Fig. 5 St. Georgen ob Judenburg, St George’s church, mural painting cycle in the former choir, southern wall (photo: open source/AleXXw)
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