Portrait of the 16th–18th Centuries of the Belarusian Lands in the Context of Cultures of the West and the East

Abstract

The article deals with the cultural and art history foundations of the portrait of Belarus in the 16th–18th centuries. These portraits do not fit into the framework of well-known European artistic styles, although they correspond to the eras of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classicism. Michael Baxedoll suggested considering such works at points of overcoming the classical artistic norm. In his opinion, correctly chosen contexts are important. For Belarusian (Great Lithuanian) portraits, these are unique traditions, genealogical myths, court rituals and the military code of knightly-noble, aristocratic culture. Hubert Damish proposed another approach, within the framework of the concept of “aistesis”, that is, the formally expressive features of the work that give the pictorial production its historical meanings. For aisthesis, the sign component of the work, its narrativity, political, socially significant connotations and the context of its existence are equally important. Within this framework, the portrait becomes a text for visual reading with its symbolic codes, like an iconic form, which, meanwhile, gives rise to the necessary sensory experiences. It contains documentary, Roman verism, as a tribute to antiquity, with the obligatory inclusion of inscriptions and coats of arms. The iconic basis of the Belarusian portrait required a mandatory indication of a knightly ethos, that is, images of armor or parts of knightly attire, attributes of power and attributes of offi cial affi liation. Verism is more accurately described by the philosophical concept of “aistesis”, that is, such a bodily-sensory perception of a work of art, when it is expensive by appealing to a wide range of memories, the historical past, and not by its artistic form and pictorial innovations. The European portrait, born in the 15th century, on the contrary, was more in line with the Platonic concept of “eidos”, as a prototype, an idea hidden in every individual existence, revealed as a kind of inner essence of human existence.