Legenda Aurea - Anjou Legendarium

Legenda Aurea - Anjou Legendarium

Around 1330, King Charles I of Hungary, known as Charles Robert of the House of Anjou, commissioned a manuscript for his three year old son Andrew. The manuscript was an enlargement of the famous Legenda Aurea by the Dominican monk Jacobus de Vorraigne. It deals with a collection of saints’ lives and deeds. As a result, the Hungarian Legendarium places particular emphasis on people who had a special meaning for the Anjou family. A splendid picture cycle of 105 mostly full-page miniatures on a gold background illustrates the valuable manuscript.

A Picture Book for the Prince

The Legenda Aurea is a picture book intended for children, in which short texts describe the scenes depicted in the book. Early on, King Charles I of Hungary wanted his son to be familiarized with the legends of the saints, whom were associated with the Anjou family. Scenes are depicted from the lives of important biblical figures from various epochs. Among them are apostles and martyrs, monks, the Virgin Mary, but also high church officials from Hungary and Poland.

A Gothic Masterpiece

The qualitatively valuable miniatures probably originate from an important Late Gothic studio. The page-filling miniatures are separated into four scenes, respectively, that are framed by excitingly-patterned bordures. The dramatic and elegant miniatures on golden backgrounds shine in a vivid variety of luminous colors. Who exactly illustrated the codex is not knowable today. Nevertheless, the master was probably from Bologna, the school of painting of the so-called Trecento, the style that preceded the Renaissance. The miniatures of the Hungarian Legendarium show stylistic elements of naive Gothic painting and are already characterized by stylistically-changing influences of the Renaissance.

A World-Famous Book Treasure

The Legenda Aurea from Hungary, with its splendidly-colored miniatures, which are sometimes decorated with elaborately wrought golden backgrounds, is a fine specimen of Gothic book art. The work was divided into several parts and are to be found today in some of the most renowned libraries worldwide. The main part of the manuscript is housed in the Vatican Library. 20 miniatures are in the Morgan Library in New York. Five further pages are located in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.