Byzantine Emperor and Ukrainian Hetman: About the Iconography of a Ukrainian Iconт

Abstract

The article is devoted to unexplored artwork of Ukrainian iconography — the icon of the Intercession of the Mother of God with a portrait of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi from the Bohuslav region that dated the XVII century. The article considers the version that was expressed by Serhiі Plokhу in his brochure Tsars and Cossacks: Riddles of the Ukrainian Icon (Kyiv: Critique, 2018. 158 p.) regarding this icon as a “component of Little Russian ideology”.

The purpose of the work is proposed to be a consideration of this icon at different levels: starting from the material and technical level and the use of X-ray images to clarify the original appearance of the icon image. The article also explores the outer visible layer of “restoration”. They are significantly distorting, not only the portrait features of the original image of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi but also ideologically changing the political accents of the icon. These details, especially the change of the Byzantine imperial character to the “royal” one, give the reason to believe that this particular artwork is the original iconographic image of “Little Russia nism”.

Based on the comparative methodology of the lower and upper layers, we explore the main idea of the icon. The scientific novelty consists in the use of a combination of all available information about the work: the historical contexts of the events in 1654 and the writing process of this icon were in a tight connection, as evidenced by the notes of Paul of Alepрo. The key event reflected in the icon — was the meeting of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi and Patriarch Makarios in Bohuslav in June 1654. The perception focus of the image is a contradiction between the emphasis on the gaze of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, which is aimed at dialogue with the viewer, and the eyes of other characters that focused on the Mother of God. The main feature of this icon is the way how it grabs the audience’s attention and focuses it on the gaze of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi which looks directly back to the viewer while other characters look at Holy Mother.

As a conclusion — this can be interpreted as a demonstration of his open and democratic political views in a historically inherited act from the Byzantine Empire.