Free Download Serhii Plokhy, "Tsars and Cossacks: A Study in Iconography "
English | ISBN: 0916458954 | 2003 | 102 pages | PDF | 10 MB
Ukrainian Cossacks used icon painting to investigate their relationship not only with God but also their relationship with the Russian tsar. Could Emperor Peter I and his adversary in the Battle of Poltava (1709)―the Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa―be depicted in the same icon? Why did the Cossack colonels commission icons with the portraits of their tsars, but not of their own Cossack leaders, the hetmans? Could a Catholic king be portrayed in an Orthodox icon? Why are the Russian tsars and Orthodox hierarchs missing on some of the Zaporozhian Cossack icons?