Barokowa rzeźba na Litwie

ENBaroque in wooden sculpture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania appeared much later than in architecture. The prime reason was the fact that in the second half of the seventeenth century sculptors working in Lithuania were, with few exceptions, local artisans. The situation changed distinctly in the first half of the eighteenth century when original features of mature Baroque finally emerged. Lithuanian sculptures showed little similarity with their counterparts in Western Europe. They lacked such typically Baroque traits as pathos and dynamic, swelling forms. Earlier compositions, concentrated in Vilno, were destroyed in the city fires of 1737 and 1748. The impact of the Baroque revealed itself already in certain extant works from the last quarter of the seventeenth century, although many sculptures from the beginning of the eighteenth century, frequently placed in narrow niches, were still static (Židikai, parish church, fourth quarter of the seventeenth century; Linkuva, parish church, seventeenth-eighteenth century). An unwillingness to pursue more complex compositions was not dictated solely by the inferior technical abilities of the craftsmen. The Lithuanian sacral sculpture of this period was expected to embody solemnity (Krinčinas, parish church, first quarter of the eighteenth century). Some of the foreign incomers broke with the local tradition and abandoned well-established patterns. Such instances include figures which originally were part of the main altar in the St. Peter and Paul church on the Antokol in Vilno.The majority of saints are depicted in extremely complicated poses, but even these massive figures have cohesive solids, unfragmented by draperies which endow them with flowing shapes. In certain cases, the local sculptors resorted to Baroque graphics - hence the less hampered motion and the exaggeration of certain parts of the body (Kowno. St. George church, beginning of the eighteenth century). The Lithuanian authors of other sculptures from the first half of the eighteenth century readily departed from the classical canon of beauty and took relish in characteristic faces, borrowed from everyday life, or gave the figures of saints their own facial features. In this way, even inferior sculptors resorted to realism although unfamiliarity with anatomy forced them to portray the figures in a highly schematic manner (Trakai, parish church, ca 1717). Figures in motion were still rare in the second half of the eighteenth century. They appeared much more frequently in increasingly universal reliefs which replaced the tectonic crowning of the altars.Here the figures were surrounded with clouds, and did not belong to direct objects of the religious cult thus offering the artist an opportunity for an unrestrained interpretation of the selected theme (Videniškai, parish church, second quarter of the eighteenth century). In Lithuania the transition to Rococo sculptures was extremely slow. Even those compositions which disclosed greater sophistication still remained rather rigid. Ponderous, athletic figures could be encountered as late as the middle of the century (Rudnia, parish church, middle of the eighteenth century). The first examples of the new current originate probably from the fourth or fifth decade of the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, even the slender twisted figures in wind-swept costumes possess realistic and strongly individualized facial features which do not resemble the excessively sweet countenances so frequently prevalent in Western Rococo. The fact that the appearance of similar altar figures by no means signified a rapid transition to light and capricious forms testifies to a continuum of the specific traditions of Lithuanian Baroque sculpture (Prienai, parish church, ca 1750).