Sondra Rankelienė (Vilnius University Library, Lithuania)
There are not many authentic images and plans of 16th- and 18th-centuries Vilnius, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Georg Braun, Gabriel Bodenehr and Andreas Cellarius). Therefore, every surviving fragment depicting the old city is important. It is often hidden in the background, behind the portraits of various saints and noblemen created by famous artists (Franciszek Balcevičius and Aleksandras Tarasevičius), in the panegyrics glorifying the nobility, in the maps of the region and provinces (Hirsch Leibovich and Nicolas Sanson), in the vignettes and initials decorating the books, in the assignment books Vilnius Academy students, or in the paintings of book owners on flyleaves. The presentation attempts to bring such usually architectural fragments to the foreground, to discuss their authenticity and, if possible, to identify them, comparing with the known and confirmed images of Vilnius and architectural objects that have survived to this day.