The Visual World of the Hungarian Angevin Legendary

Dispersed in two continents, four countries and six collections; many of its pages were cropped, cut into four, or lost forever; its history, origin, commissioner and audience are obscure; still, in its fragmented state it presents fifty-eight legends in abundant series of images, on folios fully covered by miniatures, richly gilded, using only one side of the fine parchment; a luxurious codex worthy of a ruler; a unique iconographic treasury of medieval legends; one of the most significant manuscripts of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom – these are all what we call the Hungarian Angevin Legendary.

The manuscript known as the Hungarian Angevin Legendary, made for Hungarian royal patrons, is an extraordinary relic of medieval book illumination; a luxurious codex worthy of a ruler. It was created in Bologna in the early 14th century by number of painters. Dispersed in four countries and six collections, the 142 richly gilded leaves recount the legends of fifty-eight saints at varying length. The miniatures are all clearly distinguishable and colorfully depicted. In the course of his twenty years of research the author examined almost all of the surviving leaves, including the largest sets in the Vatican Library and in the New York Morgan Library. The analysis of the codex has three levels: identifying the original criteria of saints selected, the presentation of the iconographic features of the respective legends, and the exposure of the recurrent image types on the leaves. One section of the book is an attempt to reconstruct the original appearance of the manuscript. Lastly, there is an investigation of the fate of the copies across centuries. Charts, tables, and drawings are included to help illuminate the structure and history of the codex.