Exhibition "St. Dominykas and St. Hyacinth in Lithuania: Eight Centuries of Memory.", 17 August 2021 – 29 January 2022

On August 6, 2021, the feast of St. John the Baptist of the founder of the Order of Preachers was commemorated. The 800th anniversary of the death of Domingo de Guzmán (c. 1170–1221). 1231 is traditionally considered to be the beginning of the Dominican missions in Lithuania, which was eventually linked to the legend of the first Dominican of Polish origin. Hyacinth (Jacek Odrowąż, c. 1183–1257). Both saints reached Lithuania only indirectly: through their students and their stories, which became the basis for the images immortalized in goldsmithing, painting, graphics, sculpture, and textile works.

The exhibits of the exhibition reflect the tradition of memory that has been going on for eight centuries. Its origins are the biographies of the saints, which were supplemented by later stories about visions and miracles. The stands present excerpts from the sources that inspired the depiction of saints, and present frescoes, moldings, paintings that cannot be borrowed. For example, the oldest St. The image of Dominykas in Lithuania, which has survived in the fresco of the Vilnius Bernardine Church created in the 16th century, impressive rococo moldings of the Church of the Holy Spirit and the monastery in Vilnius, and wall paintings.

The remnants of the rich art of the monasteries are monstrances from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from Sejny, Liškiava, Samogitian Calvary, paintings and sculptures from Paparčiai, Trakai, Vilnius Dominican monasteries, Kaunas Bernardine Blessed Virgin Mary. Trinity churches testify to a living tradition of piety, which was also followed in folk artworks. Attempts were made to maintain it in the parishes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially during the activities of the Rosary Brotherhoods. The images created after the restoration of the Dominicans in Raseiniai (1932–1940) and Vilnius (since 1992) testify to the rebirth of the Order's depiction of saints together. In the context of the first half of the twentieth century, an important and little-known St. Hyacinth Chapel in Vilnius St. The history of decoration in the Church of St. Philip and St. James: Over the course of several months in 1944, a group of artists led by Jerzy Hoppen decorated the chapel with scenes from the life of the saint. Their sketches, stored in the library of the University of Toruń, are returning to Vilnius for the first time since the Second World War.

The exhibits of the exhibition came from nineteen parishes, ten museums, four libraries and three private collections. They are complemented by the paintings of St. Peter's presented in the exposition. St. Dominic's and St. Excerpts from sources and photographs of works that are not possible to borrow inspired the depiction of hyacinth. All this testifies to how from the origins of piety in the first CVs the stories about the saints changed, as St. Dominykas and St. Hyacinth was imagined by people who lived in the current territory of Lithuania. For eight centuries, St. St. Dominic's and St. The memory of the hyacinth created a rich local heritage, revealing connections with the Christian countries of Europe. The exhibition helps to rediscover and appreciate it.