Visual Arts; Gender; Nunneries; Middle Ages; book illumination; Bohemia; Moravia

The text consists of three case studies dealing with illuminated manuscripts commissioned by women from royal families; two for the prominent royal nunneries—one at Star  Brno situated in Moravia and the second in Prague in Bohemia. The third study deals with an interesting vernacular Book of Hours commissioned by a queen or princess from the Prague Luxembourg court showing intriguing influences by specifically female monasticism as well as a visual translation of monastic devotional motifs and ideas into the secular-courtly setting; a process that can be observed elsewhere in Europe as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These idiosyncratic topics are discussed and interpreted with regard to gender specifics regarding the liturgical, devotional and artistic contexts. Such themes originated in the convents and clearly demonstrate the unique character of female monastic spirituality and its attractiveness outside the monastic setting, especially in the quasi-monastic communities of religious women, tertiary nuns and beguines, who have only recently begun to attract the attention of Czech medieval art history research, but also, as shown here, among the female members of the royal court.