Prakalbinti aplinką: XVII a. – XVIII a. pabaigos vaikų portretų atributika.

It is difficult to imagine early secular portraits without one of their key constituent elements – attributes. Objects, animals, wardrobe elements, and other details that were depicted in representational and intimate compositions had to express as accurately as possible the social status, hobbies, or even character traits of the portrayed person, thus testifying to how that person sought to present themselves, and at the same time to record how others wished to see them. The latter circumstance is particularly evident in children’s portraits. For many centuries, children’s portraits, commissioned by their parents, guardians or other relatives, and usually modelled after adult portraits, primarily performed the functions of consolidating the family status and embodying the expectations placed on the offspring. Today, attributes seen in portraits can help us to trace these expectations. The subject of the article is six characteristic portraits of children from the seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries by local and international artists held in the collections of Lithuanian museums. Examining their iconography and, above all, their attributive symbolism, the author of the article seeks to verbalise the gradually changing image of interpretation and representation of childhood captured in these paintings. Both in the magnificent seventeenth-century portrait A Girl with an Orange Tree Branch held in the collection of the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, and in the intriguing eighteenth-century portrait A Boy with a Rose from the middle or the second half of the eighteenth century belonging to the Samogitian Museum “Alka,” the image of stern and not particularly childish “little adults” embodying the family’s social status, expectations, and goals is created by means of respective gender-based attributes and in the tradition of representational baroque images. Another portrait A Boy and a Dog held in the collection of the "Alka" Museum radiates a much happier and more carefree mood. Research helped to specify the dating of the work and the identity of the portrayed – this late eighteenth-century work, which most likely depicts one of the sons of the owner of the Tirkšliai manor, Feliks (vel Felix) Skarbek-Ważyński (1736–1813), already manifests a great sense for the freedom, energy, and joys of childhood, which was asserted in the works by Enlightenment theorists. Yet, certain details of the child’s outfit and the composition of the work itself still resemble traditional representational portraits of children, thus making A Boy and a Dog an intermediary piece that marks the transition from the old traditions of children’s portraits to a more organic iconography of childhood. Several portraits of children created in the spirit of Neo-Classicism and early Romanticism, held in the memory institutions of Lithuania, evidence somewhat different stylistic and representational approaches. For example, the protagonist of the painting Unknown Boy in the collection of the National Museum of Lithuania, dated to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, although restrained, seems somewhat freer and less stiff thanks to certain details (a ruffled wig, a daring look, a firm stance). This effect is further enhanced by the abstract, light background of the painting, which creates the impression of cleanliness and order, and at the same time, symbolically implies a “clean slate” or a child’s new life. In his left hand the boy holds a plain parchment with sensitive and almost philosophical wishes of the child’s parents to their offspring written in French, which replaces the common attribute – a weapon – and becomes an eloquent witness of family relations at that time. An even more minimalistic approach was chosen by the artist and the clients of the Portrait of a Boy from 1798, held in the collection of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art – in this small-size image, which is nevertheless charged with extraordinary warmth and energy, a self-confident boy is painted without any attributes. The focus of the picture is the unique character of the child, typically emphasised in the Enlightenment era, a personality that does not need any additional elements for its description. Of course, this trend of children’s images was influenced not only by stylistic and social changes, but also by their intimate function. It was often unnecessary to overload the portraits meant for the decoration of court spaces with additional elements indicating the status or future aspirations of their characters that were easily recognisable by their relatives. However, late eighteenth-century intimate images were not always devoid of attributes. A characteristic example is a small painting Children from the collection of the “Alka” Museum, depicting two unidentified children. At first sight, this work also seems to visualise the child-rearing ideas proposed by Enlightenment thinkers to society of that time, including outdoor games which are beneficial for endurance and health, comfortable clothes that do not restrict movement, and relying on the child’s natural innocence and curiosity. And yet, there is a single attribute that catches the eye in the painting – a bird that the girl holds in her palm. The bird, which often appears in the early iconography of children’s portraits, was often interpreted from a melancholic perspective, as a symbol of the human soul floating between heaven and earth, a symbol signalling the possibility that life might leave the body at any time, which was so relevant in the context of high mortality of children. Thus, in the painting Children, the bird fluttering in the girl’s hand becomes a symbolic metaphor for the fragility of a child's life and perhaps also of the transience of childhood itself. This metaphor also testifies to a delicate combination of the old and new traditions of portraying young children that is revealed in this picture. Having taken a closer look at the specific images of children in the collections of Lithuanian museums, it can be concluded that although attributes in the portraits of young children usually perform the function of structural and social attribution, the objects accompanying the children also bear witness to much more complex relationships between the portrayed child and their environment represented in the work of art, which pose considerable interpretative challenges. Early images of children are revealed as a complex and unique field of intersection between actual childhood and the external ambitions shaping it, in which attributes also play an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senuosiuose atvaizduose žmones supantys atributai – vienas reikšmingiausių istorinio portreto simbolinių ir prasminių elementų. Atributai apibrėždavo ne tik konkretaus portretuojamojo charakterį, socialinę padėtį, bet drauge savitai įamžindavo ir išorinę, aplinkos nulemtą jo asmenybės reprezentaciją. Bene ryškiausiai šis aspektas skleidžiasi vaikų portretistikoje, kurios kūrybos iniciatoriais ir formuotojais dažniausiai tapdavo jų artimieji. Straipsnio objektas – šešių Lietuvos muziejų kolekcijose saugomų vietinių ir užsienio autorių nutapytų XVII a. – XVIII a. pabaigos vaikų atvaizdų ikonografija ir atributinė simbolika. Remiantis šiais pavyzdžiais tekste siekiama nors ir fragmentiškuose, tačiau dėl to tik dar labiau intriguojančiuose lietuviškosios vaikų portertistikos kloduose ieškoti kaip tik atributuose neretai užkoduotų mažamečių ugdymo ir anuometės vaikystės sampratos refleksijų. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]