This City and Another

The article examines the notion of city in its two expressions. In the first, reader is introduced to the analytic method and its Vitruvian source. In the second, several possibilities of phenomenological approaches are weighed and the Cartesian cogito discourse together with its cognitive framework is re-conceptualized and a new approach is posited. In the Classical conception of time, its beginning was an indivisible entirety (apeiros) that Chaos separated from, then with the help of gods, moon, stars, and planets were born from the Chaos. The precondition for the Renaissance school of perspective and for plans of the ideal city, is order and geometry that helps man to create his own world, to give an idea a form and signify man-made things. The author attempts to extend the genius loci, a notion previously employed by Christian Norberg-Schultz, based on preceding work in the tradition of classical  phenomenology from Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger onward, the semiotic aspect of perception found in Yuri Lotman’s work is integrated with the phenomenological thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur.  Also, Jacques Derrida has a prominent place in the text, the author owes him the primary example – treatment of the University City in its visible and hidden extensions. Together these extensions express the difference between two poles of knowledge – united in the notion différance.CV:Juhan Maiste is professor and Head of Department of Art History at the University of Tartu. As a prolific writer he has authored a large number of of monographs and articles on architecture, classicism, cultural heritage, the philosophy and poetics of art history. Also among his scholarly interests have been Estonian and Livonian manor architecture, the phenomenon of park landscapes as well as the work of Johann Wilhelm Krause. In addition to teaching and research, professor Maiste curates the publication of the Baltic Journal of Art History

Miks kõneleb Laokoon kirjasõnas ja ei kõnele marmoris?

In this article, the author focuses on the work called Laocoön, which was one of the most popular subjects for 18th century art writers. The first description of the work was provided by Pliny the Elder who, in the 36th volume of his Naturalis historia, calls it the best work of the art in the world – be it painting or sculpture. Pliny identifies three artists from Rhodes – Hagesandros, Polydoros and Athenedorus – as the authors of the Laocoön Group. After the sculpture was found in the vicinity of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Laocoön has repeatedly aroused the interest of art historians. Johann Joachim Winckelmann raised the sculptural group into focus during the Age of Enlightenment. And his positions, and sometimes opposition to them, form the basis of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s, Johann Gottfried Herder’s and Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s writings on the Laocoön. I am sure that their thoughts deserve also attention today, when we speak about the fundamental change in philosophy, philology, and partially also in art history. In seeking an answer to Lessing’s question, “Why does Laocoön not cry in marble but in poetry?” Can art speak? And if it can, how? The first stage of the article explores the contradictory nature of word and picture, in which regard both Lessing and Herder preferred the former. The second question that arises in the article is: What are the framework and boundaries of art writing as a method of art history for ascertaining and describing the internal nature of a work of art? And further, do words enable one to arrive at the deeper layers of a work and the reason for the act of creation? And if so, to what extent? The third and most important issue examined in the article is the two possible approaches to a work of art, and visual images more generally – the analytical and phenomenological. By relying on history, and the broadly accepted methods of the narrative, sociological, biographical, and other sciences contingent on it, the epistemological nature of art has remained outside the conceivable limits of scientific language. And as such, it has reduced the possibility of understanding pictures and finding them a place in today’s scale of assessments; of speaking not only about the external and measurable parameters, but also about works of art as unique phenomena, in which an invisible and metaphysical content exists in addition to that which is inherent to the visible and the describable. Just as much as our rudiments of rationality and logical analysis help us to understand works of art, their impact relies on a subjective readiness to receive artistic experiences, which according to Goethe, transform the Laocoön into something affectively animated in the torchlight. Art is usually revealed by in-depth sources via the contemplative reflection that follows sensory experiences. Since Longinus’s time, this has been described as sublimity, and it garnered supporters in the form of the Neo-Platonic authors of the Renaissance, whose role in 18th century aesthetics is just as significant as the art history tradition based on classical archaeological research. In the writings of Winckelmann, and those who followed him, the two poles of this approach to art are tightly merged. The author’s goal is to draw attention to ways of understanding and writing about art, besides the descriptive methods and those related to history; to those that focus on the processes related to the gnoseological side and to subconscious creation, and provide a place for words and their power to create ever newer and more expressive metaphors. One possibility for translating visual images into verbal form is to adopt the breadth of poetry and its language, which truthfully, being just as ambiguous and inexplicable as art, enables us to make the indescribable describable; via a work of art as the initial idea, and the work that informs us of this idea as a series of formed images that can be assessed as pictures that describe the spiritual image (or eidolon in Greek)

Artistic Genius versus the Hanse Canon from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age in Tallinn

In the article, the author examines one of the most outstanding andproblematic periods in the art history of Tallinn as a Hanseatic city,which originated, on the one hand, in the Hanseatic tradition andthe medieval approach to Gothic transcendental realism, and onthe other, in the approach typical of the new art cities of Flanders,i.e. to see a reflection of the new illusory reality in the pictures. Acloser examination is made of two works of art imported to Tallinnin the late 15th century, i.e. the high altar in the Church of the HolySpirit by Bernt Notke and the altarpiece of Holy Mary, whichwas originally commissioned by the Brotherhood of Blackheadsfor the Dominican Monastery and is now in St Nicholas’ Church.Despite the differences in the iconography and style of the twoworks, their links to tradition and artistic geography, which in thisarticle are conditionally defined as the Hanse canon, are apparentin both of them.The methods and rules for classifying the transition from theMiddle Ages to the Modern Era were not critical nor exclusive.Rather they included a wide range of phenomena on the outskirtsof the major art centres starting from the clients and ending with the semantic significance of the picture, and the attributes that wereemployed to the individual experiences of the different masters,who were working together in the large workshops of Lübeck, andsomewhat later, in Bruges and Brussels.When ‘reading’ the Blackheads’ altar, a question arises of threedifferent styles, all of them were united by tradition and the waythat altars were produced in the large workshops for the extensiveart market that stretched from one end of the continent to the other,and even further from Lima to Narva. Under the supervision ofthe leading master and entrepreneur (Hans Memling?) two othermasters were working side by side in Bruges – Michel Sittow, whowas born in Tallinn, and the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucywere responsible for executing the task.In this article, the author has highlighted new points of reference,which on the one hand explain the complex issues of attributionof the Tallinn Blackheads’ altar, and on the other hand, placethe greatest opus in the Baltics in a broader context, where, inaddition to aesthetic ambitions, both the client and the workshopthat completed the order, played an extensive role. In this way,identifying a specific artist from among the others would usuallyremain a matter of discussion. Tallinn was a port and a wealthycommercial city at the foregates of the East where it took decadesfor the spirit of the Renaissance to penetrate and be assimilated.Instead of an unobstructed view we are offered uncertain andoften mixed values based on what we perceive through the veil ofsemantic research

HIIU-SUUREMÕISA AND KOLGA. TWO MANOR ENSEMBLES OF THE DE LA GARDIE AND STENBOCK FAMILIES IN THE MIRROR OF THE 17TH–18TH CENTURY NOBLE CULTURE

Kolga (Kolck) and Hiiu-Suuremõisa (Dagö-Grossenhof) are two ofthe most prominent manor ensembles in Estonia. Belonging to theDe la Gardie and Stenbock families, their architectural historieshave been thoroughly studied both in Sweden and Estonia. In the1930s, Professor Sten Karling compiled a survey of Jacob and MagnusGabriel De la Gardie’s projects for the castles of Haapsalu andKuressaare (Arensburg). Based on unpublished archival materials,the primary aim of this article is to introduce new data about theambitions and main trends of the Baltic high nobility in their farawayEstonian estates. The second and even more important task of theessay is to offer a new outlook on the building activities regardingthe Baltic villa rustica in its golden age within the Baltic aristocraticarchitecture. Beside the patrons of both manor ensembles – the Dela Gardies and Stenbocks, the author has studied multiple sources ofinternational and local architectural development in tandem with thearchival findings and comparative art-historical research, to shinea new light on the main trends of the Baltic cultural history of theEnlightenment period

THE CONCEPT OF RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE BALTIC PROVINCES BETWEEN THE GREAT NORTHERN WAR AND THE COSMOPOLITANISM OF THE 19TH CENTURY

The goal of this article is to examine the role of the new Russian rulingpower as it related to cultural policy in the Baltic provinces betweenthe Great Northern War (1700–1721) and the Russian Revolution (1917),in order to engender a discussion about the Russian influence inEstonia’s architectural history – its content and meaning – based onprimary sources in the archives of Estonia, St Petersburg and Moscow.The historiography of this topic dates back nearly a century; as aneighbouring country and an important centre of political power andculture, the influence of St Petersburg as the main Russian metropolishas been always been taken into consideration and studied in thehistory of Estonian art history. The articles by Sergey Androsovand Georgy Smirnov that appear in this volume have provided theinspiration to try and re-examine the entire spectrum of Estonia’sposition between East and West, and to point out the main subjectsin this new context and the relationship to the new geography ofarchitecture in the Age of Enlightenment and the stylistic changesof the 19th century