Baltic Journal of Art History

Thinking of the Ends of Things: The Porch as a Location of Morality and Mortality in the Late Medieval Wall Paintings of Rymättylä Church

2025-11-11T13:16:34+00:00

In this article I analyse the late medieval wall paintings in Rymättylä
Church (Finland), dated 1514. I focus on the wall paintings in the
porch and the large Last Judgement painting on the east wall of the
nave. The porch, considered a liminal zone, serves as a transitional
area that marks the boundary between the secular outside world and
the sacred interior of the church. I argue that the morality motifs
and the Mother of Mercy motif depicted in the wall paintings in
the porch prepared the viewers to enter the church and see the Last
Judgement scene in the nave. The themes of bad morals and mercy
in the images of the porch played an important role in reinforcing
the passion history of Christ and the salvation of the soul at the Last
Judgement. Via images, the porch played a crucial role in reinforcing
the shared Christian worldview, as individuals passing through it
symbolically renew their commitment to this worldview. Drawing
on the theories of liminality, as well as art historian Paul Binski’s ideas
on cathedral portals, the article situates the porch within the
broader context of medieval art, highlighting the societal functions
of images therein.

Collecting Pieces of History: The Latest Discoveries of Estonian Manorial Architecture from the City of Marburg

2025-11-11T13:20:18+00:00

The story of writing the history of Estonian manorial architecture began a hundred years ago with the first monograph, Das baltische Herrenhaus (1926–1930), written by Heinrich Pirang. After the long decades of exclusion from investigation, the topic came to life with full force in the last quarter of the 20^th century, and to this day captures the hearts of many. Although each written story brings scholars closer to discovering aspects of the manorial era, there is still a long way ahead.

The complicated past has scattered pieces of this history across Europe, requiring researchers to collect and connect fragments preserved from many different places. Yet this very dispersal is also what makes the subject so engaging. Within this context, Marburg stands out as one of the most rewarding destinations for anyone interested in manorial architecture. Both the Herder Institute and Foto Marburg offer invaluable collections, where photographs often serve as the only surviving witnesses to building practices, especially in the case of wooden manor houses. Such sources resonate with the intellectual momentum of the pictorial turn, which has underscored the interpretive and evidentiary value of visual materials in historical research.

Thus, the history of Estonian manorial architecture continues to be written as a collaborative and evolving endeavour. Each contribution not only deepens our understanding of the manorial past but also demonstrates that the very act of piecing together this fragmented history remains as meaningful and captivating as the discoveries themselves.

Erich von Kügelgen – ein deutschbaltisches Schicksal. Sein Leben und die Beeinflussung durch den deutschrussischen Künstler Sascha Schneider

2025-12-16T17:28:43+00:00

For several years now, Erich von Kügelgen (1870–1945) has been emerging from the shadow of his more famous artistic relatives – Carl, Gerhard, Constantin and Sally – into the focus of art-historical interest. His sombre, surface-oriented Symbolist painting has long proved difficult for viewers to interpret, and scholarly engagement with his work was hampered by the lack of biographical material.

In preparation for the major Kügelgen exhibition of 2023–2025, previously unknown documents have come to light in the family archive, which the author has subjected to scholarly analysis. Numerous surviving letters reveal a man marked by a troubled childhood and a lifelong inner conflict between two professions, that of painter and that of physician, a tension he processed through his art.

This article situates his life within the turbulent era endured by many Baltic-Germans, who after 1914 found themselves homeless, torn between Germany, the Baltic region and the Russian Empire and caught between competing observances and loyalties. Erich von Kügelgen’s biography appears almost prototypical of these destinies.

Amid this confusion, the late-vocation artist sought orientation and found it in the German-Russian painter Sascha Schneider (1870–1927), whose life and work are likewise introduced and set in relation to Erich’s. Closer examination, however, also reveals distinctly individual narrative and humorous aspects of Kügelgen’s art.

Finally, the Tartu exhibition drew attention to Hermann von Kügelgen, Erich’s father. The son of celebrated landscape painter Carl, Hermann distinguished himself in Tartu as a teacher of drawing and design, and as a progressive spirit who anticipated Bauhaus concepts in Tartu.

Photography and Heritage Documentation

2025-12-16T17:36:59+00:00

The past is always irretrievably lost; nevertheless, we are left with our
heritage and photographs. In some cases, the two may also coincide.
On one hand, photographs themselves form part of our heritage, and
on the other hand, they are used to document our heritage. In this
article, I discuss how photography affects our engagement with the
past, shapes our understanding of the past, and recreates the past in
the present day. Photography is instrumental in shaping concepts and
practices central to many approaches to heritage. Examples can be
considered in this article of heritage presentation and interpretation,
as well as surveying and archiving processes. Documentation is an
integral part of heritage preservation, conservation, and restoration.
Since all objects can be considered as sources of information, the
preservation of heritage can also be viewed informationally. Since
its introduction, photography has actively participated in the process
of defining heritage and also in its institutionalization. Heritage,
regardless of its location, is easier to grasp and handle in visual form. The use of photography significantly changed the way the
general public experienced architecture. Through photographs,
distant objects suddenly became closer. The circle of individuals
who had visual knowledge of architecture increased noticeably.
Photography contributed significantly to the introduction of
heritage objects and thus to the broader use of the term “heritage”
itself. Today, conservation/restoration can no longer be imagined
without photography. Again, this is not something particularly
surprising, since photography was developed in addition to the
previously used methods of visual representation. It must be
recognized that photography helped make the describing and
surveying of monuments more accurate. Photography did not
bring a radical change to the documentation of monuments, but
was smoothly integrated with visual practices that had been in use
until that day in age. Photography also plays an important role in
the theoretical discussion of conservation/restoration. The central
problem of conservation and restoration is the question of object
authenticity. Photography’s association, whether apparent or not,
with nature and objectivity allowed it to be used to support various
theoretical concepts. Obviously, the relationship between heritage
and photography is not unilateral or clearly defined; it is a complex
interaction between multifaceted phenomena.

Olympic Urbanism in Tallinn: Preparations for the 1980 Olympic Regatta

2025-12-16T17:40:51+00:00

As the Sailing Regatta of the 1980 Summer Olympics was going to take
place in Tallinn, it was accompanied by a large-scale and ambitious
plan for urban development, which shaped the city’s constructional
image remarkably. This article studies the preparations for the Tallinn
Olympic Regatta within the framework of the concept of Olympic
urbanism, treating the construction plans linked with the regatta as
an autonomous type of city planning. The aim is to analyse how the
planned, partially realised and unrealised building projects reflect the construction dynamics and spectacle characteristic of the Olympic cities. The article does not concentrate on the architectural
analysis of single objects, but on the building programme as a whole
– its political background, planning process, and impact.