A Vilnius side street in winter

At the end of the 1950s, Vytautas Mackevičius (1911–1991) painted a sketch with the cathedral as a backdrop. It is painted as seen from the Old Arsenal at the foot of Gediminas Hill. On the right is the cathedral sacristy, crowned with a dome, separated on the left from the building of the Pioneers’ Palace (the former house of the merchant Abraham Schlossberg, built in the 19th century) by a winding side street. The artist attempted to capture the atmosphere of a cold winter’s day, with grey piles of snow in the side street painted in broad brushstrokes and sketchy paintwork, a chaotic rhythm of tree trunks, the pale white Old Town in the distance, and pink and stormy wind-blown clouds. Today, this picture, which was not painted for documentary reasons, has a significant documentary value, for the site has completely changed. The Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, rebuilt in 2009, now stands where the side street was, and the remains of the Schlossberg house have been incorporated into the palace.

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album VILNIUS. TOPOPHILIA I (2014). Compiler and author Laima Laučkaitė

At the end of the 1950s, Vytautas Mackevičius (1911–1991) painted a sketch with the cathedral as a backdrop. It is painted as seen from the Old Arsenal at the foot of Gediminas Hill. On the right is the cathedral sacristy, crowned with a dome, separated on the left from the building of the Pioneers’ Palace (the former house of the merchant Abraham Schlossberg, built in the 19th century) by a winding side street. The artist attempted to capture the atmosphere of a cold winter’s day, with grey piles of snow in the side street painted in broad brushstrokes and sketchy paintwork, a chaotic rhythm of tree trunks, the pale white Old Town in the distance, and pink and stormy wind-blown clouds. Today, this picture, which was not painted for documentary reasons, has a significant documentary value, for the site has completely changed. The Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, rebuilt in 2009, now stands where the side street was, and the remains of the Schlossberg house have been incorporated into the palace.

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album VILNIUS. TOPOPHILIA I (2014). Compiler and author Laima Laučkaitė