The Renaissance as a Process: the Transformation in Orthodox Church Painting in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Abstract

The Ruthenian Orthodox art in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the sixteenth century opened itself to the influences of Western European culture. The article is devoted to а description and analysis of this phenomenon. Although for most of the seventeenth century no work emerged that was pure enough in terms of its style that it could be termed а fully Renaissance work, this fact does not mean that there wasn’t any Renaissance at all. Here the Renaissance was not а style, an epoch, or а period, but а process that unfolded over two centuries, without а strictly defined beginning and end.