Yanis Hadjinicolaou, The Art of Medieval Falconry. London: Reaktion Books, 2024, 232 pp., 74 color images.

Few attributes of the medieval knight or lady are so ubiquitous as the falcon, hawk, etc. Best known, Emperor Frederick II wrote the most seminal treatise on how to raise these birds of prey, his De arte venandi cum avibus ca. 1240–1248, and Yanis Hadjinicolaou, art historian at the University of Bonn, Germany, of course draws extensively from this work for his study on medieval falconry. He has obviously collected a wide range of visual and literary sources reflecting the enormous appeal which the falcon and other birds of prey have exerted throughout the ages, demonstrating convincingly that this type of hunting was already known in ancient times (Homer) and enjoyed high popularity both in Asia and Europe. To claim, however, that the “visual power of falconry has been neglected by art historians and cultural historians alike” (9) is a gross misunderstanding. I could fill the rest of this review with a bibliography of relevant titles, But this is already present in Hadjinicolaou’s own 3-page bibliography, which defies his argument from the start. Nevertheless, he deserves our recognition for having assembled much visual material from across the medieval world to highlight the fact of falconry having played a major role in courtly culture. Pleasantly, he has also scoured much medieval literature in his search for the falcon/hawk as a motif.