Baltic Journal of Art History

Foreword

2023-10-24T12:03:03+00:00

DATING THE NEWLY DISCOVERED CEILING PAINTING IN THE HOUSE OF ESTLAND’S NOBILITY IN TALLINN

2023-10-25T11:35:08+00:00

In the course of renovating the Estonian Knighthood (Ritterschaft)
House in the autumn of 2022, a magnificent find came to light in the
ceiling of a first floor room – a figural plafond painting on a canvas
attached to the ceiling. This find is sensational since it adds to the
number of rare and fragile canvas plafonds, only a few of which
survive in Estonia. This article demonstrates how archival research
and dendrochronology can work together hand in hand. According
to historical documents, this part of the Knighthood House was built
around the year 1690, because it was described as nearly finished
in the spring of 1691. By applying dendrochronological dating, it

was possible to ascertain that the trees that form the main wooden
structures were felled after the growing season of 1689 and were
used in construction, probably in 1690. The Üxküll family of Vigala
manor sold their newly completed town palace to the Knighthood of
Estonia in 1694 for unknown reasons. The plafond painting probably
originates from the period between those two dates, 1690 and 1694.
Thus, the Knighthood House’s plafond ceiling is the only firmly
dated painting of this kind in Estonian architecture. It originates
from an earlier period than most other plafond paintings in Tallinn,
which are assessed using stylistic comparison as dating from the
period after the Great Northern War, specifically from 1721 to 1760.
The nearly 60 m2 plafond is certainly the largest in Estonia. The use
of distemper and oil paint techniques together makes this painting
remarkable. It is also the only known plafond with more than one
painting layer from different periods. At the time of writing, the
painting has not yet been exposed to view. Its thematic subject matter
and the details of its technical realisation will be revealed only
after its restoration. The question of the authorship of the plafond
painting also remains unanswered at this stage. The overpainting
with Rococo ornamentation covering the original painting can be
cautiously associated with the name of the guild painter, Gotthard
Holm, who was paid for work done in the Knighthood House in
the 1760s.

THE RENAISSANCE GARDEN AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS

2023-10-25T11:41:20+00:00

This article looks at the contradictory essence of the Renaissance
garden, which is reflected in the dialogue of the garden’s form
and content, and which is in constant change. While the garden
of the Quattrocento with its formal language of rigid geometric
rules stimulates free thought and the emotional world, remaining
a modest background itself, the garden of the Cinquecento dictates
the direction of thought and produces concrete frames for it. The

thought of the Early Renaissance, boundlessly freewheeling in the
world of fantasy, is increasingly tied to the garden’s form. The gentle
emotion of the inner world is suffocated by the intruders from the
outer world and the garden that carried the free thought of Early
Renaissance becomes an area of restraint.

ROMANTICISM AND REMEMBERING

2023-10-25T11:45:52+00:00

This article looks at the celebrated poem Elegy in a Country
Churchyard (1751) by Thomas Gray, and links it to the place of its
inspiration, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. The development of
English churchyard memorials is considered, followed by a brief
discussion of the Graveyard School of poetry, which considered
themes of mortality and melancholy set in the context of burial
grounds. This formed a strand of proto-romanticism and was
influential across Europe. The poem is then analysed in terms of its
discussion of rural approaches to death and remembrance. A survey
of mid-18th century churchyard memorials at Stoke Poges is then
provided, and their imagery discussed: most of these post-date the
publication of the poem. Thomas Gray died in 1771 and was buried
in the tomb of his mother and aunt. He subsequently received a
memorial in Westminster Abbey. A later owner of Stoke Park, the
manor house of the estate, John Penn, was eager to commemorate
the poet. He commissioned the celebrated architect James Wyatt to
design a memorial which would be visible from the main house.
This was erected in 1799, and consisted of a sarcophagus raised on

a tall base, the sides of which were inscribed with extracts from
the Elegy. This was a highly unusual form of parkland memorial
celebrating a poet and his best-known work, which has subsequently
become one of the best-known verses in the English language.
There is irony in that the poem is a discussion of rural humility
and yet was celebrated through an imposing monument, raised
by an extremely wealthy owner as a feature in his private park.

THE WORLD OF VASTSELIINA ESTATE IN 1913

2023-10-25T11:50:20+00:00

The main subject of this article is a photo album created by Reinhold
Karl von Liphardt Jr, an outstanding representative of the Baltic
German landed gentry in Estonia in the first half of the 20th century.
In the early 1990s, the director of the “Bildarchiv Foto Marburg” of
the Art History Institute of the Phillips University Marburg, Mrs.
Brigitte Walbe made the duplicates of the photographic materials
from the collection of the Baltic German historian and genealogist
Georg von Krusenstjern available to the author of this article.
The article classifies and analyses the 181 photographs pasted
in the photo album which, with the highest degree of certainty,
can be attributed to Reinhold Karl von Liphardt Jr. (1864–1940), the
owner of Raadi, Vastseliina and several other estates. Judging by the

photographs in the album, it can be concluded that von Liphardt used
photography as a means of enriching his emotionally saturated life
with yet another means of artistic self-expression. The photographs
taken in the period from the winter of 1912–1913 to the winter of
1913–1914, convey an inordinate amount of visual information about
the landscape, architecture and society in the Vastseliina manor.
Reinhold Karl von Liphardt’s photo album presents a series of
chronologically consecutive images and it is similar to a poetic “diary
in pictures”. Reinhold Karl von Liphardt used photography as a
perfect means of documenting his ecocultural environment. His
landscape photographs are characterized by great attention to detail.
The cultural and sociological significance of the rural scenes in the
photographs is further increased by the presence of local people in
them. The Seto ethnic group lived in the estates of Reinhold Karl
von Liphardt and, thanks to their ethnographic uniqueness, drew
the attention of an educated landlord.
The photos with individual and group portraits of the
representatives of the Seto ethnic group are not only vivid evidence
of the Estonian culture in the first decades of the 20th century, but
also striking works of art, whose power of expression elevates them
considerably above the emotionality and artistic effect of Reinhold
Karl von Liphardt’s lyrical landscapes and idyllic family portraits.

URBAN SPACE AND CULTURAL ARCHETYPES

2023-10-25T12:05:05+00:00

This paper analyses cultural and aesthetic phenomena and their
inherent meanings within the Japanese city. In the introduction, I
first briefly define the key concepts used in the analysis: cultural
archetype, collective memory, and cultural identity. I will approach

the theme from a comparative point of view by examining Japanese
urban features and archetypal principles in contrast to the European
city.
Early Japanese urbanisation centred around imperial palaces, with
the first cities founded by successive emperors from the 7th century
onwards in the Nara region, near present-day Kyoto. The orthogonal
plan for the imperial capital was copied from the contemporaneous
Chinese dynasties. Spatial organisation was hierarchical, imperial
quarters were located at the northern end of the central south–north
axis of the city, and the most prestigious plots were around the
Emperor’s palace. Kyoto, the historical Heian-Kyô, was founded as
the imperial capital in 794.
Tokyo, the historical Edo, became a “castle city” in 1457 when a
military castle was built, and subsequently the capital when the
shôgun moved government from Kyoto to Edo in 1603. The shôgun’s
castle, the centre of power, intertwined with the hierarchical urban
order spiralling around it. Edo gradually became a modern capital,
Tokyo, while Kyoto remained the traditional centre of high culture
and the seat of the powerless Emperor until 1868.
The Japanese city is a cultural metaphor. Psychological uncertainty,
due to the country’s location in a precarious earthquake and volcanic
zone, and an awareness of the perishability of life based on Buddhist
philosophy, have all deeply influenced both Japanese culture and
the Japanese mind. Emptiness, the Taoist ideal linked to Buddhist
thinking, is also reflected in the urban space. For instance, a Japanese
city has no designated urban centre whereas in the European city
this is a culturally and economically accentuated place.
In this paper, I also analyse the Japanese spatial concepts ma and
oku, along with their archetypal manifestations in urban tissue and
street scape. While ma means experiencing space in time, oku refers to
the hidden dimension of the urban experience, or the psychological
state of processing a path whereby the urban core remains hidden
and only partially discovered.
Regardless of Japan’s recent historical and economic development,
the cultural characteristics of urban spaces have not changed a great
deal. Tokyo is still a mosaic city of small village-type communities
with an inherent feeling of togetherness. Hidenoby Jinnai has called
this phenomenon an “ethnic continuity” whereby the new and the
old are mixed in an ethnic order.

AN UNFULFILLED DREAM

2023-10-25T12:09:36+00:00

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF HERITAGE SCIENCE IN ESTONIA

2023-10-25T12:12:06+00:00