Bez hranic: Umění v Krušnohoří mezi gotikou a renesancí = Without borders: Art in the Ore Mountains between the gothic and renaissance

During the high and late Middle Ages, the Ore Mountains and the adjoining inland territory was a region whose prominence was determined by economically-powerful and culturally-rich royal and subject towns that were themselves strongly influenced by the mining activities that thrived on both sides of the frontier lands – in Bohemia and Saxony. Starting from Prague, the centre of the Bohemian Kingdom, two trade routes linking Bohemia and Saxony passed through towns that formed the economic infrastructure which supported life in the mountains. The exhibition guidebook presents artworks from the 14th to the 16th centuries that were created on both sides of the borderland in the foothills of the Ore Mountains. The unprecedented wealth of these centres in the late Middle Ages – i.e. in the 15th and 16th centuries – was shown by the strong desire of the towns, nobility, monasteries and individuals for artistic self-representation, with the material outcome meeting the highest criteria of art-historical evaluation. In its individual sections devoted to the culture of the above-mentioned towns, the exhibition will feature sculpture and painting (altars and their preserved fragments), objects made of noble metals for liturgical purposes (chalices, monstrances and reliquaries), liturgical books and examples of decorative architecture (portals). Mining in the Ore Mountains will be explored through objects used for ore extraction (mattocks, hammers and lamps), as well as coins (Jáchymov thalers) and medals struck in the Jáchymov mint. The individual chapters focus on specific donor and cultural entities, such as royal towns, important monasteries and prominent noble families. In this context, the development and forms of patronage in the late Middle Ages are explored.00Exhibition: National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic (27.11.2015-13.03.2016).