Subačiaus Street by the Missionaries’ Church in Vilnius

In Bałzukiewicz’s pictureSubačiaus Street by the Missionaries’Church in Vilnius, he not only showed a detail of the street with the church hall and the rotunda-shaped porch of the Missionaries’ Church, but also recreated a scene from 18th-century life: a nobleman walks along the street in a home-made coat tied with a traditional silk sash, a gallant cavalry officer walks arm-in-arm with a girl, townsmen chat quietly, and beggars beg for alms. The artist reconstructed the dress and the bearing of people at that time. The watercolour illustrates characteristic 20th-century retrospectivism, a return to Vilnius’ past, and the golden age when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was free and not part of the Russian Empire. Text author Laima Laučkaitė.