Audiotour16th–18th-century Belarus in portraits and heraldry

Exhibition «Sixteenth to Eighteenth-century Belarus in Portraits and Heraldry» is dedicated to the culture of upper classes in Belarus of the time. Since second half of sixteenth until eighteenth ctct., Belarus was a part of Rzeczpospolita (the Commonwealth of Both Nations) i. e. the federative state of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was a time of nonviolent polonisation and enlargement of Catholic denomination affecting aristocracy and middle class in the area of Belarus. However, many Polish-speaking magnates, especially those of szlachta (gentry), distinguished themselves from inhabitants of proper Poland expressively and showed their Belarusian-Lithuanian “krajowy” (local) patriotism.
There are images of coats of arms of state, administrative, confessional, family and personal purposes on the items from the collection of documents, books, sphragistics, clothing, drawings, and paintings. The Heraldry or Armoury is a system of knowledge about the coats of arms and the rules of their composition and use. In the past centuries, no country of the world has seen such an authority and respect that coats of arms had in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. The nobleman’s dignity and his symbol, the coat of arms, were hard-won in the hard-fought fields.
In the exhibition, portraits of dynasts of old families of Zawiszas and Radziwiłłs, as well as those of kings, statesmen, clergy and gentry, are presented as gallery collections. Galleries with portraits of the Zawiszas and Radziwiłłs are supplemented with generation tables (family trees), based on up-to-date researches.
In fact, persons in portraits and most of the contemporary inhabitants of Belarus are compatriots, but in a different temporal and geopolitical space. Many persons, events, artefacts of the second half of sixteenth – eighteenth centuries represent a common cultural and historical heritage of the contemporary Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Poland, Ukraine, and the Republic of Lithuania.