Baroque after Baroque: wooden retables in Lithuania

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Altorių ansambliai; Barokas; Bažnyčia; Mediniai retabulai; Neobarokas; Neobarokinis altorius; Retabulas; Altar ensembes; Baroque; Church; Lithuania; Neo-baroque; Neo-baroque altar; Retable; Wooden retables.

ENThis article discusses neo-baroque wooden retables from the 19th and early 20th century in Lithuania. These are “standard” parts of a church, especially of a provincial one. Following the tradition borrowed from baroque brick and wooden interior designs, churches consist of three to Five altars, a pulpit, sometimes confessionals, a baptismal font, benches and other furniture. The best surviving part of such complexes is, as a rule, the retables. But painted altar-pieces are not considered here; the reason is, on the one hand, that only few of them survived, on the other hand, that in the 19th century a retable was usually perceived as a passive frame for sculptures and paintings, as opposed to the understanding of the 17th and 18th century, when architecture and carving used to serve not only as a means of representing images, but also of intentionally supplemented general iconographical programmes. Most of the 19th century retables can be analysed separately from and are non-related to the sacral images they are framed by. [Extract, p. 74]