Book Description

With this book, the Hungarian Academy of Rome offers to the medievalist community a thematic synthesis about Hungarian medieval art, reconstructing, in a European perspective, more than four hundred years of artistic production in a country located right at the heart of Europe. The book presents an up-to-date view from the Romanesque through Late Gothic up to the beginning of the Renaissance, with an emphasis on the artistic relations that evolved between Hungary and other European territories, such as the Capetian Kingdom, the Italian Peninsula and the German Empire. Situated at the meeting point between the Mediterranean regions, the lands ruled by the courts of Europe west of the Alps and the territories of the Byzantine (later Ottoman) Empire, Hungary boasts an artistic heritage that is one of the most original features of our common European past. The book, whose editors and authors are among today's foremost experts in medieval art history, is divided into four thematic sections - the sources and art historiography of the medieval period, the boundary between history, art history and archaeology, church architecture and decorations, religious cults and symbols of the power -, with a selection of essays on the main works of Hungarian medieval art held in museums and public collections.