A Bohemian Painting and the Court of Charles IV in Prague

In November 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired, at public auction in France, an extremely rare Bohemian painting from the fourteenth century. A small-scale devotional picture of the Virgin and Child enthroned, probably dating from the 1340s, it has been associated by a leading scholar of the field with a series of panels often considered the keystone of the opening chapter of Bohemian painting. However, removal of the over-painted background has revealed an architectural setting of exceptional complexity and spatial consistency, indicating an artist of enormous talent and originality who must have had direct contact not only with French painting but with the most advanced ideas of Italian art. The stylistic choices evident in it reflect the cultural interests of Charles IV and the key figures of his court in Prague.