The Images, Technique and Stylistic Features of the Baroque Style in the Works of the Urals Stonecutters

Abstract

The article examines the particularities
of the development in the Urals region
of the genre of figurative sculpture of small
forms from assembled stone by means
of comparison with the art of the Italian
masters from the baroque period,
the establishers of this type of stonecutting art.
The small figurative sculpture from assembled
stone (polylite), which has developed
as an independent genre of the art
of stonecutting in the 17th century in Italy,
acquired further development not only
in Western Europe, but also in Russia,
in the large-scale centers of artistic elaboration
of stone in the country. In the region
of the Ural Mountains, notwithstanding
the pre-revolutionary conditions, the mastery
of the principles of preparation
of anthropomorphic images in the polylite
technique took place only during the Soviet
period as a particular school of preparation
of specialists. At the contemporary stage
it becomes possible to observe an active
development of this genre in the artworks
of the stonecutters of the Urals. The present-day
flourishing of the polylite figurative sculpture
of small forms in the works of the Urals-based
stonecutters is connected here not only with
the culture of elaborating this material
and the successive continuity of the skills
of working in the polylite technique, but also
with the turn to the traditions of polychrome figurative compositions of Florentine masters
of the Baroque Era, the effectiveness
and naturalist qualities of their depiction.