Translation: Jon Alkorta Martiartu, PhD (EHU/UPV)

The portrait of Vlad Tepes

The most bloodthirsty man in history

Today I want to tell you about a painting that you are probably familiar with. It is the most famous portrait of Vlad III Draculea, the prince of Wallachia (a region in southern Romania that was a nation until the 19th century), known to all as “the Impaler”. He became famous when the Irish writer Bram Stoker used him as the basis for the story of his famous Dracula.

Let’s first talk about the background of this character: the Balkans in the 15th century. The Ottoman Empire was expanding in southwestern Europe and had subdued Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Opposing the Ottomans were the kingdom of Hungary and the Romanian principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania.

Vlad was born in Sighisoara in Transylvania in 1431 when his father Vlad II Dracul, King of Wallachia, was in exile in this place. Vlad III went through different situations. In his youth he was a hostage of the Turks who wanted to control the kingdom of Wallachia. However, when his father was assassinated by order of the King of Hungary, he was supported by the Turks to become King of Wallachia. He reigned for a short period of time and soon returned to exile. In 1456 he returned to the throne and began his terrifying legend.

It was at this point that he joined the Christian side and began a veritable crusade against the Turks. In the campaign of 1462 Vlad crossed the Danube to plunder the Ottomans who were in Hungary. After his victory he sent the Hungarian king two sacks full of ears, noses and heads, accompanied by a letter in which he told him that he had killed a total of 23,884 Turks and Bulgarians, not counting those who were burned in their houses.

“If Almighty God hears the prayers and entreaties of Christendom, if He favours the entreaties of His pious servants, He will grant us victory over the infidels, enemies of the Cross.”

Vlad saw himself as a crusader. Legend presents him as a prince fond of torture and an enthusiast of slow death, who used to dine by drinking the blood of his victims or dipping bread in it. In his three periods of rule, totaling just seven years, he executed some 100,000 people, mostly by impalement. Hence his nickname Vlad Tepes, which means Vlad “the Impaler”.

His father’s name was Vlad Dracul and he was Vlad Draculea. The term “Dracul” means “dragon” and so “Draculea” would be “son of the dragon”. This is because his father belonged to the so-called Order of the Dragon, which curiously survives today (one of its headquarters is in Zagreb, Croatia). However, the nickname Draculea, for his reign of terror could also be translated as “son of the Devil”.

Let us now have a look at the portrait:

It is a bust of a character with prominent brown eyes, aquiline nose and thick mustache, and long brown hair with some gray hair, so it would be a portrait of maturity. On his shoulders he wears a kind of fur shawl, which reveals his red silk shirt with gold buttons. On his head he wears the typical headdress of the Vlach princes in which stands out a luxurious frontal plume that has as its base an eight-pointed star with a ruby in the center surrounded by seven small pearls. The star and the stele could symbolize a comet, which would refer to the passage of Halley in 1456, an omen of the beginning of his cruelest reign. The passage of the comet would also be remembered with the issue of a new Walachian coin, a silver ban of 0.8 grams, on whose face appeared a helmet with an eagle carrying a cross and in the background a star with a long tail.

However, experts doubt that this portrait really belongs to Vlad III, and think that it could instead be his father, Vlad II.

First of all, we know that it was painted about a hundred years after the death of Vlad Tepes and that it could have been a copy of a portrait that was lost in a fire. We know that it was in the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria in a gallery of famous people, especially from the military. We also know his fondness for everything diabolical, which may be why he also wanted to have a portrait of Vlad Tepes in his collection.

But the inventories of this collection only state that it is a “Walachian prince”, without indicating his identity. This doubt also arises if we look at some paintings and engravings depicting Vlad II, very similar to this one.

If we look at one of its gold buttons there is an inscription that says “S.T.”, still undeciphered, which could shed light on who the subject of the portrait is. On the lower part there is a white stripe on which the name of the portrayed person should be inscribed, but nothing can be seen.

The painting is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, inherited from the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II. Don’t hesitate to visit it if you make a trip to Vienna.

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