Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe, 1450-1800

I doubt whether works like this still are published, and by that I mean such comprehensive syntheses, based on thorough knowledge, broadly oriented with sufficient eye for detail, and gorgeously illustrated. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann covers the entire period from the 15th to the 18th century, for the German countries (and there were quite a few of them), and what is now Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria with occasional extensions into northern Italy, the Low Countries, the Baltic and western Ukraine. You just have to do it. Although it must be said that 'art and culture' in this case mainly is high culture, with apparently a special preference for architecture. A solid book this is, with a very dense text, show more inevitably verging on the encyclopedic. But DaCosta Kaufmann also has a very clear message: openness and cosmopolitanism characterized Central Europe more than ever during this period. I don't know whether I would dare to say that with such certainty for the period after 1990. More in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5732415705 show less