CLASSICIST PORTRAITS

At the turn of the 18th-19th centuries the portrait was a particularly popular genre in Vilnius. The number of clients increased - aristocrats, landowners, noblemen, university professors and the city intellectuals wanted to have their portraits. And, on the whole, an interest in man, his spiritual and intellectual abilities as well as in the role of personality in society was also growing. There fore, the painters created both official representational and more intimate chamber portraits.
In life-size representational portraits a model is depicted standing or sitting against the background of the interior. He is in festive dress and his activities and position in society along with his merits are witnessed by attributes (the portrait of the Samogitian Bishop Jonas Steponas Giedraitis by P. Smuglevicius (P. Smuglewicz) and the portrait of the Duke Adomas Jurgis Cartoriskis (Adam Jerzy Czartoryski) by Juozapas Oleskevicius (Józef Oleszkewicz). The portraits of a more ordinary composition, painted half-size, are also attached to this type of portraits (e. g. the portraits of university professors Jonas Rustemas (Jan Rustem) and Juozapas Peska (Józef Peszka).
The second type of portraits most frequently features the artists’ close friends and the members of their family. In them the painters interpret their models in a more informal manner, abandoning official postures and making greater attempts to convey the characters and mood of the portrayed.
At the late 18th and the early 19th centuries allegoric portraits enjoyed great popularity. The portrayed persons were depicted as antique goddesses and gods, muses or the heroes of the Roman times, wearing the clothes of those personages and with certain attributes in their hands. The exhibition presents six portraits of this type (Vestal’s Offering - Portrait of Elena Masalskyte by P. Smuglevicius, the group portrait of Marija Mirskyte, Barbora Sumskyte and Adomas Napoleonas Mirskis, the portrait of Marija Zazickyte-Dobkoviene as the Muse of Poetry by J. Rustemas, “Three Muses” and the portraits of Teofile Radviliene as Hebe, and Aloyzas Venda as David by Juozapas Peska). Incidentally, this type of portraits cannot be found either in Warsaw or Kracow of that period.
One more specific type of the Vilnius portraits of those days was the portraits of scientists - university professors. They were usually small-sized and were marked by a moderate composition and palette. J. Rustemas, who after the death of P. Smuglevicius was regarded as the best portraitist in Vilnius, popularized this type of portrait.

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     Page updated 2006.03.28