Country

National masterpiece

Description

Link

Austria

David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio

This well-travelled masterpiece was created in Italy, and passed through collections in England and the Netherlands before coming into the possession of Imperial Austria in the 17^th Century.

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Belgium

Madonna surrounded bySeraphim and Cherubim, by Jean Fouquet

This 1572 work is probably the portrait of Agnes Sorel, the mistress of Charles VII and is housed in the Royal Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts.

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Bulgaria

Enina Apostolos (Енински апостол, Eninski apostol)

10th or 11th-century Old Bulgarian Cyrillic manuscript. It is the oldest Cyrillic manuscript currently part of a Bulgarian collection.

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Cyprus

Church of Panagia Phorbiotissa, better known as Panagia of Asinou,

Situated in the north foothills of the Troodos mountain range, this UNESCO World Heritage listed Byzantine church is built on the east bank of a stream, three kilometers south of the village of Nikitari.

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CzechRepublic

Velislavova bible (Biblia picta Velislai)

14^th century illustrated bible

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Germany

Metropolis, by Fritz Lang

This influential German expressionist science-fiction film from 1927 has been included in UNESCO's Memory of the World register

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Denmark

Photographs of Russian Prisoners of War, WW1

Three Russian prisoners of war 1914-1918 in Danish care, thanks to Red Cross. From Royal Library of Denmark, Department of Maps, Prints and Photographs

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Estonia

6-year-old Khanty girl in traditional dress, by Silvia Anslang

The Khanty - an indigenous Finno-Ugric people of Western Siberia - are struggling to maintain their traditional lifestyle in the face of a large-scale oil and gas industry. This image is part of a large collection of ethnographic drawings from the expeditions of the Finno-Ugric Research Program at the Estonian Academy of Art.

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Greece

Antikythera Mechanism

Constructed in the second half of the second century BC, this is the earliest preserved portable astronomical calculator.

http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/

soon to be accessible in Europeana

Spain

Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beato de Liébana 

This 1047 manuscript contains comments on the Apocalypse and is illustrated with some 100 Mozarabic miniatures

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Finland

Nokia's rubber football boots

Football has also become a part of Finnish design thanks to Nokia soccer studs.

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France

Lascaux cave paintings

The discovery of the monumental Lascauxcavein 1940 heralded a new era in our knowledge of both prehistoric artand human origins.

Lascaux website, soon to be accessible in Europeana

Hungary

Bronze equestrian statue attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci

Unlike any other equestrian statues attributed to Leonardo, this one was cast in bronze available in the 16th century, with techniques already established at the time.  Should it be a copy, it must have been made shortly after the artist's death.

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Ireland

Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921 signed by the British and Irish delegates at 10 Downing Street, London.

The Treaty established the Irish Free State as a self-governing dominion with independence in virtually all matters of practical government, together with complete control of its resources.

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Italy

Tondo Doni, (Holy Family) by Michelangelo Buonarroti,

Painted in 1504, this is earliest of only three surviving panel paintings by the adult Michelangelo, and the only one to be finished

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Lithuania

Artis Magnae Artilleriae by Kazimieras Simonavičius

This 1650 discussion of rocketry and pyrotechnics remained a standard work in those fields for two centuries.

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Luxembourg

"Luxemburger Wort"  launched in 1848 and the "Escher Tageblatt" launched in 1913.

Both newspapers are still widely read in Luxembourg and they illustrate the priority given by the National Library of Luxembourg to the digitization of the press.

Luxemburger Wort on Europeana

Escher Tageblatt on Europeana

Latvia

Card from the

Latvian FolkSong Festival

From 1933; celebrating this Baltic cultural miracle

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Malta

Les Gavroches, a sculpture by Antonio Sciortino

Inspired by characters from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the sculpture stands for both hope and innocence, representative of a young generation aspiring to freedom and progress.

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Netherlands

The Evangiliary, the Edmond Gospels

Created in the 9^th or 10^th century in addition to evangelical texts and images it also contains the very first illustrations of Dutch people – count of Holland Dirk II and his wife Hildegard

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Poland

The St. Florian Psalter

This early fifteenth century gem contains the textsof the Psalms in three languages: Latin, German and Polish. It is the oldest Polish translation of the Psalms,

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Portugal

Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads) by de Luis de Camões

This epic poem from 1572 is a fantastical interpretation of the Portuguese voyages of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries.

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Romania

Somnul by

Constantin Brâncuşi, Constantin

1908 sculpture

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Sweden

Old Town and the Southern part of Stockholm city.

1900 photograph by Carl Curman

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Slovenia

The Problem of Space Travel: The Rocket Motor

Pioneering 1928-29 work by Herman Potocnik, writing as " Herman Noordung "

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Slovakia

Celtic coin from the 1^st Century BC

Found in Bratislava 1923 when digging foundations for Tatrabanka

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UK

Image of John Logie Baird with his first Television

From first inventing television in 1925, by 1927 Scotsman John Logie Baird had succeeded in transmitting television from London to Glasgow and the following year saw the first transatlantic television transmission.

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