The collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe opened the doors to cultural treasures that for decades had been hidden, forgotten, or misinterpreted. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann looks at Central Europe as a cultural entity while chronicling more than three hundred years of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Ukraine, Lithuania, and western parts of the Russian Federation. Kaufmann surveys a remarkable range of art and artifacts created from the coming of the Renaissance through to the Enlightenment.

"Kaufmann throws considerable light on one of the more neglected and least understood periods in art history". -- Philadelphia Inquirer

"A wonderful book which does justice both to a formal analysis of the art and to an explanation of broader political and economic forces at work". -- Virginia Quarterly Review

"Important and stimulating, Kaufmann's study examines the cultural legacy of a region too little known and understood". -- Choice