BETWEEN ANACHRONISM AND HISTORICISM. NEW VIEWS ON BOHEMIAN RENAISSANCE BOOK PAINTING

This article seeks to define several new themes and possibilities that can be exploited in the interpretation of Bohemian Renaissance book painting. The first part of the study focuses on a summary and critical re-evaluation of the existing literature on the subject and on the identification of the key perspectives and methods that have influenced the way researchers approach the field. The second part of the study outlines a new concept for the understanding of the Bohemian Renaissance illuminated choir books made to order for the Utraquist Church music religious confraternitie (modus legendi). The angle of vision emphasised is the interpretation of these materials in broader cultural and social context. An article by leading Czech historian Frantisek Smahel 'From the Medieval to the Modern Age: modi legendi et videndi' - has been a source of inspiration in this respect. The complex group of illuminated musical sources of the Bohemian Renaissance may be grasped in a sense formulated by Frantisek Smahel. He writes that at a time when almost all the European continent was already governed by a modern modus videndi, in Cisalpine reformation movements we can identify, on the contrary, a certain turning away from the 'eye' towards the 'ear'. In addition to this theory the author outlines in the form of certain impulses the direction of possible interpretation of the painted illustration itself and its iconography (the reception of protestant iconography, the person of the donor). .