Vetka Collection of Chased Icon Oklads to be Presented for the First Time at the National Art Museum
A temporary exhibition "Heat and Cold of Metal. Adornment of the Vetka Icon" from the collection of the F.R. Shkliarov Vetka Museum of Old Belief and Belarusian Traditions will open at the National Art Museum on August 20, writes BelTA.
Photo: vetka-museum.by
The exhibition will feature 125 works of painting, decorative and applied art, drawings, and tools of master chasers.
"The Vetka collection of chased icon oklads is a unique collection for Belarus. For the first time, works by local masters of the 18th - early 20th centuries, collected in the region and restored at the Vetka Museum, are presented to a wide audience. The masters embodied the symbolism of ornaments. The Byzantine curl and grape signify the vital power of nature and symbolize paradisiacal bloom. A pearl in Christianity is the image of a righteous soul. The chased oklad recreates the image of a pearl kerchief - the Virgin Mary's 'ubrus'," the organizers said.
A large part of the exposition was donated to the museum by the Sviaschennikau family dynasty. Arina Radzivonauna, the daughter and granddaughter of chasers, recalled the work technologies of her grandfathers and father with his brothers, and polished the oklads herself.
The last generations lived in Klimovo, Bryansk region. Arina's great-grandfather passed down technological manuscripts from the 18th-19th centuries describing metalwork and the production of finift and enamels.
"The paradoxical ways of thinking of masters for modern understanding, their organization of space, contained within a few millimeters of a metal plate. They appear in architectural structures with reverse and spherical perspective, in a 'soft' landscape that connects ancient symbolism with a direct sense of nature, as well as in the epic narrative," emphasized the museum.
The temporary exhibition will run until October 25.