Writing the Renaissance: Mai Lumiste and the Soviet Art History Discourse
Writing the Renaissance: Mai Lumiste and the Soviet Art History Discourse

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with Mai Lumiste’s ways of constructing the Renaissance. This is ideology and discourse critical approach with the aim to observe how the established disciplinary methods and approaches, and Marxist-Leninist ideology caused and shaped the art historical interpretations of Lumiste in the post-Stalinist Estonian SSR. Lumiste created the local Renaissance on the basis of the idea of correlation between society and art. In the Renaissance as defined by Lumiste are important: 1. societal level, characterised by secularisation and humanism; 2. stylistic level, measured by the realistic way of depiction; 3. development level, which stresses the continuous regional evolution of the style; 4. national level, which constructs arguments for the verification of the national character of the Renaissance art production. In conclusion, Lumiste revised the established discourse of the Renaissance, writing the style into a grander and more important, more social and national notion.

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