The Cup of Prince Bocskai / The History of Romania in One Object

The next object in focus, presented in our history series in collaboration with The National Museum of Transylvanian History in Cluj-Napoca, is an artifact of exquisite beauty: a cup that belonged to Stephen Bocskai, the first of the great Calvinist princes who ran Transylvania in the 17th century. Through this amazing piece, ”The History of Romania in one Object” takes you right to the middle of a troubled time, when this land of many ethnicities, languages and confessions struggled to avoid being swallowed by the mighty Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Text by curator and historian Melinda Mihály. Video presentation by curator and historian Ana-Maria Gruia. Film concept by Geanina Simion and Dragoș Popa.

Watch and read on our FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE and WEBSITE from Monday, October 19, 2 p.m. EDT (or anytime later).

Dr. Melinda Mihály has been a curator at the National Museum of Transylvanian History in Cluj-Napoca for over 10 years. She is an expert in the Transylvanian art of the 16th, the 17th and the 18th centuries and wrote a doctoral dissertation on the Mediaeval Lapidarium conserved in The National Museum of Transylvanian History. Dr. Mihály is the author of several studies covering Transylvanian renaissance architecture, historical monuments from Transylvania, the premodern topography of Cluj, and the goldsmith and the pewter collection of the Museum. She is the translator of several studies of art history from Hungarian into Romanian and from Romanian to Hungarian. 

Dr. Ana-Maria Gruia has also been a curator at the National Museum of Transylvanian History in Cluj-Napoca for over 10 years and the curator of its History of Pharmacy Collection for the past 5 years. She is an expert in decorative arts and iconography, with a PhD in Medieval Studies at the Central European University in Budapest, and Director of a post-doctoral project focusing on the introduction of smoking in the Principality of Transylvania at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, where she is currently teaching a course on museum studies. Dr. Gruia has written several books and more than 20 articles about the history of pharmacy, tobacco pipes and smoking, stove tiles, and iconography. Her primary contribution focuses on stove tiles with religious depictions from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary and the possible function of this particular iconography. She is also an established translator, amateur artist, and passionate reenactor.

Our online series THE HISTORY OF ROMANIA IN ONE OBJECT, developed in partnership with some of the most important history museums in the country, evokes decisive epochs in Romania's past starting from artifacts or vestiges with powerful symbolic, representative value.