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Šnipiškės

Authors: Louis Bichebois (1801–1850)
Victor Adam (1801–1866)
Created:1848-1849
Material:paper
Technique:litograph
Dimensions:40 × 51.50 cm
Signature:

inscription: Album de Wilna. / 2e Série / Peint d’apres nature par Jean Chrucki Pol. Memb. de l’Acad. de St Pétersbourg. / Imp. par Lemercier, a Paris. / Lith. par Bichebois. Fig. par V. Adam. / PRZEDMIESCIE SNIPISZKI. / FAUBOURG SNIPICHKI. / No.10.

Lithograph after Jan Chrucki, Jan Kazimierz Wilczyński, ‘Album of Vilnius’, series II, fascicle I, No. 10.

Wilczyński included in the ‘Album of Vilnius’ the same pictures, but in different sizes and techniques (lithographs, steel and copper engravings). One example is the view of Šnipiškės painted by Jan Chrucki (18101885), which was lithographed by the French artists Bichebois and Adam, and a steel engraving was made by the English graphic artist Edward Francis Finden (17911857). A large colour lithograph, a simple steel engraving and a small picture kept in a prayer-book are adapted to the needs of people from diff erent social strata and of varying means. The Church of St Raphael in Šnipiškės was closed down by the Imperial Russian authorities as a result of the 1831 uprising, and it was already closed by the time when the prints were being made. There used to be a statue of St John Nepomucen on a hill near the church, but its condition deteriorated, and after the plague of 1710 a shrine was erected with a sculpture of Christ carrying the cross. After 1847, the sculpture was regarded as miracle-working, and crowds of people would come to pray before it. Therefore, Wilczyński included a lithograph portraying the shrine and the figure of Christ the Redeemer in a series of small religious pictures. The shrine was pulled down in the 1960s, when the street was being widened.

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album VILNIUS. TOPOPHILIA II (2015). Compiler and author Laima Laučkaitė