The life of medieval man was permeated with religious conceptions – everything in life was viewed in relation to Christ and the Christian faith. The main topics of artworks based on Christian dogma covered the Holy Trinity (Christ, God the Father, the Holy Spirit), the Virgin Mary, the apostles and a variety of saints. Works of art were created mainly for devotion and liturgy. Originally, they were integral parts of private chapels and public churches. The choice of exhibits, with respect to the character of collections in the Moravian Gallery, concentrates mainly on works created in the period from the 13th century to the beginning of the 16th century in the territory of Bohemia and Moravia; however, it does not dismiss international links. Therefore there is a significant proportion of works of Austrian, German and Dutch provenance. The majority of medieval works are anonymous, although they might have originally been accredited to definite authors. However, the individual “handwriting” became blurred by the collective diction and work of medieval workshops. In the early phase (especially in the 13th and 14th centuries), a tendency towards an abstract formal expression and solemnity is evident (e.g. in the relationship between the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ), then a shift from symbol towards reality is gradually more evident (a close relationship between mother and baby), moving towards a portrait aspect of the physical world, be the object man or landscape and nature.