HSE Tenured Professor Oleg Voskoboynikov Has Won the Prix Maurice Wachsmacher

Associate Professor at the Department of Social History Oleg Voskoboynikov has won the Humanities Prize 2014 for his translation into Russian of French art historian Roland Recht’s Le croire et le voir: L'art des cathédrales, XIIe-XVe siècle (Believing and Seeing, The Art of Gothic Cathedrals) in a volume published by the HSE Publishing House. The prize was awarded by the French Ambassador to Russia, Jean-Maurice Ripert who signed a certificate at the ceremony for the winner to travel to France.

In this book Roland Recht presents a contemporary explanation of the art of cathedrals as a visual artistic system made up of architecture, sculpture, monumental painting figurines.

Through a vast number of scholarly texts and literary works in Latin, Middle High German and Old French the famous historian of medieval art examines the common cultural and religious circumstances of life and changes in the values of western European society in the late Middle Ages.

The book describes the classic cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, Bourges and some less studied places of worship, as well as small objects of jewellery in museums around the world.

The prize, named after the famous Russian translator Maurice Wachsmacher, has been awarded annually since 1996 for the best translation of French fiction and literature in the humanities.