Department of Medieval Art

The Department of Medieval Art focuses on architecture and visual culture in the Czech lands in the broader European context from the Christianization period to the mid-16th century. As part of their focus on studying the functions of artworks, department members prepared a large two volumes monograph about the changes to functions of medieval artworks, concluding the Czech Science Foundation research grant Imago, Imagines. Further CSF grant projects cover research that examines artworks through the relation between the patron, artist and recipient; these projects focus on art in the Czech lands during the Přemyslid era, medieval sepulchral monuments and, more specifically, on representations of Jerusalem in Czech medieval art. A number of department members are participants in the interdisciplinary NAKI II project Gothic and Early Renaissance in East Bohemia. Research, Interpretation and Presentation which, in 2020, resulted in an international exhibition and a three volume of the scholarly catalogue. Contextual research of medieval artworks will continue as the task of future projects solved by the scholars in the Department of Medieval Art.

Department members have taken part in important recent publications, including a book on Central-European illuminated manuscripts Art in an Unsettled Time: Bohemian Book illumination before Gutenberg (Milada Studničková, 2018), The Velislav Bible: Finest Picture-Bible of the Late Middle Ages (Lenka Panušková, 2018) and The Prague Gospels Cim 2: A Manuscript Between Lands and Centuries of Medieval Europe (Kateřina Kubínová, 2017). In 2020 department members have taken part in publishing the book Ivo Kořán / Texty (Klára Benešovská, Helena Dáňová, David Vrána) and in the two volumes proceedings More Krása + The High Jump of Josef Krása (Klára Benešovská, Jan Chlíbec, Tereza Johanidesová).

The Department of Medieval Art regularly collaborates with the Centre for Early Medieval Studies: the West, Byzantium, Islam (Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno), co-editing individual issues of the prestigious international revue Convivium (Klára Benešovská) and the series Parva Convivia (Jan Klípa). Department members also collaborate with a number of prominent institutions (Faculties of Arts at Charles University in Prague, Masaryk University in Brno and Palacký University in Olomouc, National Gallery in Prague, National Heritage Institute, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften), participate in the work of several expert committees and sit on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals.