Central European Schools VII (ca. 1400-1500)

This richly illustrated two-volume collection catalogue of the Austrian National Library is dedicated to those manuscripts and incunabula of the 15th century that were illuminated and/or bound in the former lands of the Bohemian Crown as well as in the lands of the Teutonic Order and the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary. It includes a total of 164 objects from the collection of manuscripts and old prints as well as from the music collection, which were recorded and prepared for further research into book illumination from an explicitly art-historical perspective. The spectrum ranges from university manuscripts to missals and Czech Bibles, from prayer books to large-format antiphonaries and graduals, incunabula and manuscripts of humanist scholars. The illuminations not only testify to artistry and the patrons` purchasing power: their iconographic and stylistic features go beyond the text and tell of everyday life, social status, the interests and educational horizons of the patrons and artists, regional workshops and acquisitions from distant regions, book and artists migrations. In this way, a colourful picture of society and its turbulent history unfolds in the mirror of book art, leading from the late period of King Wenceslas IV in the midst of the Hussite movement and the first confessional division of Bohemia, followed by the time of the "Hussite King" George of Podiebrad, when the first Czech incunabula were printed, and the time of the divided crown under Kings Ladislaus Jagiello and Matthias Corvinus, the collector of humanist literature.