Senoji Dzūkijos liaudies skulptūra Lietuvos nacionalinio muziejaus rinkinyje
ENThe article presents the part of the folk religious sculptural collection - 223 items of Dzūkija’s folk religious sculpture - archived at the NML Ethnography Division. The history of this collection and the list of Dzūkija’s sculptural subjects are briefly discussed in the article. The cultural peculiarities of the sculptures are being analyzed, the most characteristic examples are given and the works of the renowned artists are discussed separately. The NML collection of the folk sculpture of Dzūkija reflects the singularities of Dzūkija region. The cross with a shallow wooden chapel (sometimes quite big - nearly covering the very structure of the cross) is characteristic to this region. The dominant subject-matter of a sculptural composition is a crucifix or a crucifix group that used to be on every cross and in a miniature chapel on the tree. A big part of unidentified subjects of the works resulted from a relatively small subject-matter variety of Dzūkija’s region, as compared to other regions. Dzūkija’s craftsmen specialized in making crosses, while sculpture was viewed only as a decorative attribute of a monument. Therefore, a rather small, flat and primitive sculpture dominated.
