Late baroque architecture in Poland-Lithuania

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Bernard Meretyn : Saint George's Cathedral in Lviv , Ukraine .
Andrew's Church in Slonim , Belarus .

In the Royal Republic ( Rzeczpospolita ) of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , architecture also took an active part in this pan-European artistic era in the late Baroque period .

history

The late baroque or its variant rococo ruled in Central Europe as in the rulership of Spain and Portugal longer than in the cultural centers of Rome , Paris and London and was later replaced there by neoclassicism (in the international meaning of the term).

The last kings of Poland and grand dukes of Lithuania were August II (1697–1706, 1709–1733), Stanisław I. Leszczyński (1704–1709, 1733–1736), August III. (1733–1763) and Stanislaw II. August Poniatowski (1764–1795) at the head of the Rzeczpospolita . The Great Northern War (1700–1721), in which Poles fought on both sides, led to the devastation of large areas, and the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738) spread to the Rhine and Italy.

While the high-handedness and hostility to reform of the magnates , the exploitation of the serf peasants, the disadvantage of non- Roman-Catholic sections of the population who speak other languages ​​and the policies of annexation by Russia and Prussia contributed to the division of the state (1772, 1793 and 1795) and its complete demise, among the Magnificent Saxon kings August II and August III. Warsaw , like Dresden and Nancy ( Stanisław Leszczyński's residence as Duke of Lorraine ) is a brilliant renewal, which is documented by Bernardo Bellotto's vedute .

In two centers in the east of the country there has been an independent development of baroque architecture since the 1740s, namely in Lithuanian Vilnius (Polish Wilno) with Johann Christoph Glaubitz and in Ruthenian Lwiw (Polish Lwów) with Bernard Meretyn , Jan de Witte , Gottfried Hoffmann and Paolo Fontana . In some cases, late baroque and neoclassicism merged (as with Giacomo Fontana ). In addition to the presence of numerous architects of southern and western European origin in Poland-Lithuania , the work of the Polish architect Stefan Ittar in the reconstruction of the earthquake-damaged Catania deserves a mention.

From the late baroque or rococo period, the following buildings are worth mentioning in today's successor states of the Rzeczpospolita:

Bernardo Bellotto : Miodowa Street in Warsaw (1777).
Gate of the Basilian Monastery in Vilnius , Lithuania .

Poland

Lithuania

Ukraine

Belarus

gallery

Note

The list of structures is taken from the Okres późnego baroku (The Late Baroque Period) section of the Architektura barokowa w Polsce (Baroque Architecture in Poland) article on pl.wikipedia.org. Cf. there also the article Architektura rokokowa na kresach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Rococo architecture on the edge of the former Rzeczpospolita).