Catching the context: the first genre-determined reading of Francysk Skaryna's portrait : recenzija

ENDespite my sincere admiration and great respect for I. Lemeshkin’s works, reviewing his research insights and personal involvement turned out to be not an easy task. The two years that have passed since the first publication of "The Portrait of Francysk Skaryna" made it possible to develop more reflections on this monograph. It seems to me that this is the first and unconditional success of the pioneer work of Lemeshkin: he raised problems and made assumptions that would not have been comprehended otherwise for a long time. This success has brought forward another effect: Lemeshkin’s monograph has laid the foundations for renewal in Skaryna Studies, thereby changing their perspective, so that to reassess the legacy and life of F. Skaryna in the only possible, but still elusive for many researchers, context: the context of the Renaissance (and Bohemian-German portraiture painting in particular). It is in this perspective that Lemeshkin proposes to consider Francysk Skaryna’s portrait, today largely diffused for the great audience, highly politicized and instrumentalized, but still paradoxically rigid and filled with stereotypes. [...]. [Extract, p. 295]