Description: This leather wallet was given to her husband, the poet Sándor Petőfi (1823-1849), by Júlia Szendrey for a keepsake. It is held in Budapest in the Petőfi Literary Museum, which also houses some of the Hungarian National Poet’s manuscripts, books and relics. A typical Biedermeier souvenir, made of goatskin, lined with silk and decorated with pearl embroidery (Holbein stitch/gobelin), it measures 30 x 15 cm (when open) and contains coins and a pencil with a metal top. On one side there is a chubby, naked putto ’Amor’ flying with a bunch of flowers and the iconographic lettering Petőfi Sándornak Pest 1848 (for Sándor Petőfi [Buda]Pest 1848). On the other side are embroidered laurel branches and the Hungarian national colours, together with a line from Petőfi’s poem Talpra Magyar versért (‘Rise up, Magyar’). There is a clear tension between the two sides of the object.