Menotyra

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Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Problems of Attribution and Dating of Early Baroque Paintings: The Case of the Painting Rest on the Flight to Egypt in the Collection of the Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery

Tomas Riklius — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The painting Rest on the Flight to Egypt in the Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery of the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art was previously attributed to Giovanni Antonio di Francesco Sogliani. Later, this attribution was rejected, and the painting was thought to have been created by an unknown artist of the first half of the sixteenth century. The aim of this article is to reexamine the dating and possible authorship of this painting on the basis of an iconographic and stylistic analysis.
The composition of the painting is very close to that of Francesco Vanni’s Rest on the Flight to Egypt, also known as the Madonna della pappa (Virgin of the Porridge). The similarities can be noticed in the arrangement of the figures and the colouring of their clothes, but the details are different: the combing of the Virgin’s hair, the baby’s blanket, and the bowl held by the angel. Compared to Vanni’s work, the lines are coarser, the physiognomy less precise, and the figures disproportionate.
It seems that the painting may have been based on the copies of engravings of Vanni’s image, such as those by the Flemish engraver Cornelis Galle or the Italian engraver Raffaello Guidi. Made around 1600-1602, the latter seems to be the closest to the painting in Žilinskas’s gallery. In addition, the version of Rest on the Flight to Egypt in RIISA, the Orthodox Church Museum of Finland, which dates to the seventeenth century according to the dating of pigments, also suggests that the painting in the collection of the Žilinskas Art Gallery is an imitation of popular seventeenth-century engravings and must have been painted no earlier than the first half of the seventeenth century.

Jonas Juozas Burba (1907–1952): A Graphic Designer Who Represented Lithuania with His Works

Eduardas Remecas — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article introduces the Lithuanian graphic artist Jonas Juozas Burba, one of the pioneers of contemporary Lithuanian design, by revealing the diversity of his creative activities and providing information about his newly identified works and additional data about his known works. The article also reviews the artist’s family history, his studies, and various social activities.
Between 1929 and 1933, Burba studied at art academies in Dresden and Leipzig, but did not obtain a diploma. Before studying in Germany, his main work was graphic design of books (at least 25) and periodicals (he made his debut in 1922 by winning the cover competition of the Catholic magazine Giedra for Lithuanian schoolchildren in the USA). At the same time, he took up various other creative activities: writing, publishing, designing bookplates and posters, and other fields of graphic design.
From 1930, the direction of Burba’s creative activity changed. The artist focused his attention on applied graphic art: he designed award trophies, diplomas, flags, badges, painted posters, designed and made gifts, and created postage stamp designs. At the same time, he delved into print art and advertising, presented exhibitions, and took interest in artistic photography.

Seeking Unity and Cyclical Consistency in Performing Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s ‘Unrecognised Cycle No. 10: Sea Etudes’

Vincenzo De Martino — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article revisits the question of whether the piano works by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) can be understood as components of larger cycles – an issue brought to the fore by scholars Vytautas Landsbergis, Darius Kučinskas, and Rimantas Janeliauskas, among others. Building on Janeliauskas’s concept of ‘cyclicality’ within Čiurlionis’s oeuvre – particularly his notion of ‘unrecognised cycles’, a term coined by the musicologist himself – the author investigates how performers might approach one of these, namely, ‘Unrecognised Cycle No. 10: Sea Etudes’, both in compliance with a series of characteristics of music and through concrete actions by a performer, so that it can be actually perceived as a musical cycle by the listener.

Čiurlionis’s Works in Sheet Music: Dissemination in Interwar Periodicals and Typological Publishing Aspects after 2000

Darius Kučinskas, Rima Povilionienė — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Characterised by consistency and continuity unlike that of any other Lithuanian composer since the 1900s, the publication of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s music serves as a benchmark for assessing the overall state of sheet music publishing in Lithuania. This encompasses not only the history of Lithuanian music publishing but also the evolution of editing, printing, and distribution practices. While Volume 40 of Knygotyra in 2003 provided a detailed overview of the first century of Čiurlionis’s sheet music publishing, there is now a need to review the situation of publishing of his musical works after 2000. Considering global trends in sheet music publishing and editing, recent decades of the activities of publishing Čiurlionis’s music reveal certain directions: arrangements and transcriptions, urtexts, digital publications, and others. The article also presents systematic factual data on the short-lived yet relatively systematic printing of Čiurlionis’s sheet music in the interwar foreign press, specifically in the journal Margutis (USA), which also served as a symbol of maintaining Lithuanian identity in the diaspora.

Between Being and Showing: Yana Ross’s Directorial Method and the Case of the Performance Considering the Lobster

Rimgailė Renevytė — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article analyses the creative process of Yana Ross’s theatre production Considering the Lobster (based on David Foster Wallace, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, 2023). It focuses on the director’s methods, her approach to dramaturgy, and her communication with the actors. While working on the production, Ross had been engaged both as director and playwright. Ross’s theatrical language is influenced by Bertolt Brecht, and the article draws on Brechtian insights. Brecht’s directing-acting vision of the alienation/distancing effect (Verfremdungs-effekt) is important for Ross, who aims at transforming acting into a form of thinking rather than experiencing. However, Ross goes further than Brecht by proposing various forms of alienated acting, because in contemporary theatre, the actors themselves often become researchers whose task is no longer to act but to narrate a character. While creating Considering the Lobster, Ross worked with all the actors in the same way, without being guided by specific acting method or a strictly determined director vision, but rather by offering a dialogue. As a result, actors not only created different characters but also intuitively followed their own different methods. The article discusses Ross’s method of working with actors, analyses her directing strategies, and the actors’ roles. Observation of rehearsals, recording of director-actor interactions, and the interpretation of the collected data were chosen as research methods for this article.