The Image of a Manor Idyll in the Iconography of the Dabraulėnai Park

Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis

Abstract

The article explores the problem of park iconography with the focus on a specific object – the historical park of the Dabraulėnai Manor in a certain period, viewing it from a symbolical perspective. The Dabraulėnai Manor (today, the Smarhon district in Belarus), only small fragments of which have been preserved until our times, in the 1820s–1830s was one of the more distinct centres of manor culture in historical Lithuania, while the manor park was praised by contemporaries as one of the most noteworthy examples of garden art in the vicinity of Vilnius in that period. Texts and images created in the milieu of the counts Günther allow partially reconstructing the iconographic programme of this park and the symbolic image of a family nest and an idyll of a provincial manor.

The relations of the iconography to the cultural contexts and concrete historical circumstances, as well as their symbolical expression are revealed, and the attribution of certain historical images is specified. Referring to historical sources, the author shows that the aesthetics of the park elements was influenced by direct contacts with influential promoters of landscape parks, above all, Izabela Czartoryska, as well as by the publications of Polish and Western authors of the first third of the 19th century, examples of other parks, Adam Günther’s studies at Vilnius University, and artistic practices in the family. The image of the park reflected the general artistic tendencies of Lithuanian parks in the period of Romanticism; on the other hand, while using and interpreting characteristic motifs of Romantic parks an gardens, the subjects that were relevant to the man- or owners’ family were symbolically represented. The article is illustrated with drawings of the members of Günther family, lithographs created by the artist Karimierz Bachmatowicz; part of them is published for the first time, attribution is specified, and possible prototypes are discussed.