Czech students' live re-creations of medieval paintings go viral

Czech cosplaying students posed as manuscript illuminations

Raymond Johnston

Written by Raymond Johnston Published on 27.08.2019 16:27:27 (updated on 27.08.2019) Reading time: 1 minute


Illustrations in medieval manuscripts are always just a bit off. A
mysterious group of Czech cosplaying students at the ruins of Hrad
Pořešín in South Bohemia did their best to re-create 15
illuminations from obscure hand-copied books.

The now-viral photos
took off from the website Designyoutrust.com, which oddly linked them
to legalized marijuana, without any further explanation. Marijuana
possession for personal use is in fact decriminalized but not fully
legal in the Czech Republic. Designyoutrust did not credit the
authors.

Lithuanian humor and
entertainment website Bored Panda attributed the photos to someone
named Lukrecius, but the link now leads to a deleted page.

Since then, they
have been reproduced on other sites in Hungary, Ukraine, Russia,
Montenegro, China and other countries, racking up thousands of views
and many scratched heads.

Bored Panda praised
the authors’ creativity: “Those of us who went to college can
remember the amazingly fun times we had with our coursemates.
However, I doubt that, in our spare time, any of us did anything as
weird as one band of students from the Czech Republic. … A group of
Czech students has the weirdest understanding of leisure we’ve seen
so far.”

The idea is not new, however. The “tableau vivant” was popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, and was often a way of getting around laws concerning nudity as the posed scenes were considered artistic interpretations. The movement can still be seen today with street entertainers making living statues.

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