Influence of Cultural and Artistic Motives of the Court of Charles IV on the Regal Representation of the Ricardian Court
Abstract
Resume The article is dedicated to the question of political and cultural relations of Czech lands and England in the second half of the 14th century. The aim is to demonstrate the possibility of cultural transmission by the marriage of the royal daughter Anne of Bohemia to English king Richard II Plantagenet in the year of 1382.
The prestige of Charles IV court is presented as a probable influence and Anne as the bearer and representant of this fashionable cultural influence over the court of Richard II. On the example of Anne's predecessors Isabella and Phillipa of Hainault is proven the habit of a queen in the late medieval England to keep in her retinue artists - for example illuminators and musicians.
Even though it is not possible to prove the coming of Bohemian or German artists with Anne's retinue, there is an evidence of "German" artists in the service of the Westminster Abbey after 1374. This conclusion ought to shed more favourable light on the theory of Bohemian origin of some aspects of both the culture of the Ricardian court and also the history of English painting, which is a subject of great debate since its launch in the beginning of the twentieth century.