Cenzūra ugnimi: Lietuvos Brastos Radvilų Biblijos antraštinio lapo ikonografija

ENThe article researches the iconography of the frontispiece of the Brest Bible as a programme artwork of the “new” religion, i.e. the Reformation. The Polish translation, commissioned by the Lithuanian noble Mikołaj “the Black” Radziwiłł (Mikalojus Radvila Juodasis), was printed in Brest (formerly Lietuvos Brasta) in 1563 and was considered to be the grandest achievement of printing throughout the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In Lithuanian historiography the title page of the Brest Bible is commonly acknowledged to be a unique artwork; yet a comprehensive survey of the Bible translations to national languages allows one to conclude that similar frontispieces are typical of most reformist publications. The didactic prototype for the illustration “The Fall and Salvation”, based on the new doctrine of the Reformation, was created by a German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1519. A wood carving relying on this iconography was also included into the German translation of the Bible by Martin Luther (Lübeck, 1533-1534).A two-sided tree of life divides the illustration in half, with naked branches on one side pointing at the Old Testament, and with leafy branches on the other side pointing at the New Testament, hence symbolising two separate teachings, the old one (the Roman Catholicism) and the new one (the Reformation). The frontispiece of the Brest Bible is one of splendid examples of the reformist iconography that declare the pan-European movement with explicit and comprehensible visual rhetoric of the Reformation. What distinguishes it from other coeval examples is a decorative arch bending over the visual “program of the Reformation”. Despite that architectural elements here fully prevail over the iconographic message, the latter did not evade the eye of vigilant censors: the book was being persecuted, listed among banned books, torn to pieces and even burnt. [From the publication]