| Summary: | This article identifies a number of concepts that have been used in popular discourse on Baroque art, architecture and visual culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain. These concepts are associated with the visual cult of the saints, and especially those that depicted their images, visions and emotions. Can we find significant differences between the various ways in which these images were conceptualised and medialised for the consumption of the wider public in the eastern and western parts of a divided Europe? The first part of the article is devoted to one of the most important examples of popular art history of the time – the famous BBC series and book, Civilisation: A Personal View, by Kenneth Clark. This article reconstructs the conceptual framework used by the author in his presentation of the Baroque cult of saints in the visual arts. This reconstruction then provides a benchmark against which examples of more local popularisations are measured. The author will make this evaluation through a short case study of the Baroque cult of St Elizabeth of Thuringia in Vienna and Bratislava.
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