THE MISSION AND PROFESSION OF BUILDERS OF THE BAROQUE AGE

Abstract

The article deals with the successful interaction of the Baroque builders. The author uses the term “builders” for a tandem architect-client, where the former is a builder by profession, and the latter by mission. The author states that the success of their interaction was due to the commonality of their education. This refers to the European education of that time, Septem artes liberales, which all Europeans then received and which laid the foundation of the Mohyla Academy by its actual founder, Petro Mohyla. The author mentions a number of examples of such tandems of builders and claims that it is a high level of aesthetic culture of a client, his ability to hold a highly professional dialogue with an architect, being in a common frame of reference with him regarding aesthetic and functional rules, systematically resulted in the creation of architectural masterpieces. Ivan Mazepa and Ivan Zarudnyi, Petro Mohyla and Octaviano Mancini, Paolo Romanus and Lviv brothers, Lazar Baranovych and Ivan Samoilovych with Johann Baptist Zauer — these are the names of the Baroque era builders, which the author mentions in this article. The phenomenal universality of non-Ukrainian architects at the execution of orders, particularly in Kyiv, Chernihiv and Mharsk Monastery is put in a special focus. Today, in the 21st century, a fundamentally different and non-standard situation is noted in such a dialogue: an extremely low aesthetic level of a client, lack of basic knowledge of architecture, an absence of good taste, all of which result in disastrous architectural phenomena. One of the reasons is that the cultural industry in the field of education today does not require to cultivate a taste and educate students aesthetically. The destructive consequences of such a short-sighted policy already make themselves felt.In his study, the author analyses the advantages of educational approaches of the Baroque era in general and of artistic and architectural education in particular. He explores the possibilities of applying this experience to eliminate the existing crisis phenomena and contradictions in the formation of the architectural environment. Ukrainian, foreign, soviet and pre-revolutionary sources were used.