Summary

The architecture of Palėvenė sacral ensemble and art monuments

Dalia Klajumienė

In 1676, Laurynas Mykolas Odlianickis-Počobutas (Wawrzyniec Michał Odlanicki-Poczobutt), a land court judge in Ukmergė, founded a Dominican monastery in Palėvenė, where its activities lasted as long as 1865. Later, the Church of Saints Dominic, Francis and Lawrence and the monastery buildings had been taken over by secular clergy. Based on archive data and historiography, the development of the architecture of the Dominican ensemble and art monuments is presented in the article, as well as art works obtained or restored after the monastery closure in the second half of the 19th c. and the 20th c. as well as church renovation works at the beginning of the 21st c. are discussed.

Based on the Palėvenė Convent’s Chronicle and the account book of income and expenditures for the period of 1758–1785, a great attention in the article is paid to formation of history of the church interior décor (altars, pulpit, pew boxes with coat of arms) that remained by nowadays, as well as to iconographic programme; the names of artists mentioned in the archive sources of second the 18th c. half are also presented, i.e., sculptor Jurgis Mažeika (Jerzy Możeyko), plastic sculptor Butkevičius (Butkiewicz), and painter Jokūbas Žoltovskis (Jakub Żołtowski).