CAEN, FRANCE.- Musée Normandie presents Treasures From Eastern Slovakia - From the Middle Ages to the Baroque period, 14th-18th centuries, on view through November 4, 2007. The Musée de Normandie, in Caen and the Ensemble Conventuel des Jacobins, in Toulouse, confront the everyday and artistic production of peoples with the aim of making European cultural history better known. The framework in which this exhibition can be shown gives preference to the Middle Ages, a period in which the strong originality of artistic production is expressed through the embellishment of places of worship. It therefore seemed very natural to collaborate with the museum of Eastern Slovakia in Kosice. It was created 130 years ago, when Slovakia was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, but the greater part of its collections were transferred to the Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum in Budapest in 1919. Yet what was kept in Kosice and is presented in Caen and then in Toulouse remains one of the most important collections of sacred art in Eastern Europe.

The territory of Slovakia today, occupied by Slave tribes as of the VIth century, was the heart of the kingdom of Greater Moravia in the IXth century, which included the current Czech Republic and certain regions of Poland, Hungary and Germany. During the next century the kingdom could not push back the Hungarian expansion and the country integrated Hungary for nine centuries.

As the extreme tip of the Catholic advance in Orthodox territory, Slovakia saw its artistic production flourish during the last two centuries of the Middle Ages. The royal power encouraged the settlement of German, Batavian and Italian immigrants, to exploit the gold and copper mines. It was through architecture, and in particular sacred architecture, that the Gothic style penetrated the territory. On the other hand, the Renaissance, marked by wars, Turkish invasions and the revolt against the Habsburgs, left very few traces. Towards 1650 Baroque art, a revolutionary style, appeared, imposed by the artists who came from Italy and Austria. The local workshops slowly converted and created an important quantity of altars and sculpted works to decorate churches and monasteries. Artistic activity moved further East, in particular towards Kosice.