On the analysis of traditional volyn architects’ and decorators’ activity during the baroque

Abstract

The scientific article is dedicated to the study and analysis of traditional Volyn masters’ activity and its main areas. The focus is on the actual study of amateur architects’ activity – the builders, who worked on construction of wooden churches, and decorators – iconographers and painters, who worked on wooden temples’ painting. Relevance of the issue: currently we have many scattered and fragmentary information about the traditional amateur masters who worked in Volyn region during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth times. The names of Italian and Polish architects, painters are widely known. But who built wooden village churches? Who painted them? Who created iconostasis for them? What methods, materials, traditions had been used by the folk craftsmen? To these and many more questions nowadays we have very few answers, that is why the author of the article, given the collected and processed material, is trying to come to some conclusions in this area. The given scientific article is dedicated to the study of the folk craftsmen creativity – architects, builders, painters – who worked on the Great Volyn territory in the period from the end of XVI till the end of XVIII ct. The purpose of the article is to study the availability of folk craftsmen centers in Volyn region, to analyse their activity, mutual influence of the other regional centers, to define the main centers of folk architecture in Volyn, to characterize Volyn architects’ activity methods, to define the main painters’ centers in the region, to study specific peculiarities of Volyn folk painters of Baroque era. Conclusions. The author proves the functioning of the vast network of painters’ workshops and folk architects’ workshops in Volyn. This indicates the inheritance of painters’ traditions in the region and claims a certain functioning system, which had been developed in previous times and unfortunately, there is not much information left about. The specific peculiarity of Volyn religious painting of the given period is a complete domination of craftsmen of Ukrainian origin. This feature of Volyn painting environment is related to the specifics of Volyn historical fate, which as a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had certain independence and as a result of this stayed away from the Polish attack for quite some time, which started in XVII ct., after the Union of Lublin adoption. Apart from that, it was found out that Volyn traditions of wooden temples construction partially depended on the existence of folk craftsmen unions.Traditionsof the wooden temples construction had deep roots, were passed from generation to generation and had their regional peculiarities.