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.