No research has its end. It keeps on going, enquiring into further possibilities, changing points of view, asking other questions that have been raised by previous researchers or else that have been more or less overlooked. This is precisely the aim of this monograph, one that focuses on the Bohemian picture Bible named after the figure of Velislav, who is depicted on its last folio: to approach the manuscript in a more complex perspective that allows image and text to be examined in close interrelationship.

The Velislav Bible plays a key role in Bohemian manuscript painting of the first half of the fourteenth century, as there are only a handful of examples from that period still extant. However, knowledge of the circumstances in which the Bible originated, as well as of its donator, is very sparse; neither does the name of the Velislav kneeling in the last scene depicted in the manuscript provide us with any further information on the manuscript itself.

Within the time that has passed since the manuscript was researched in its entirety by Antonín Matějček in 1920s and by Karel Stejskal 50 years later (in the 1970s), new approaches and methods have been introduced in manuscript research in order to further advance our knowledge of the Middle Ages. That is why discussion on the Velislav Bible now has to be revised and viewed from a vantage point different to that from which previous scholars observed it.

All the essays in this book target the relationship between word and image in the Velislav Bible both in a more general and in a very specific way, working with stories specially selected from the pictorial narrative. Exploring this relationship enables us to think about the audience for which the manuscript was intended.