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17 Icon Painting in the Ukrainę 21

On entering the interior proper, the attention is immediately drawn to a huge fresco representing the expulsion of tradesmen from the tempie, no doubt modelled on western motifs. Another scene, the Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch, clearly repeats a copperplate ffom the Piscator Bibie, executed after Heemskerk’s drawing.³³ The scene refers to a story in the Acts of Apostles describing the conversion of an Ethiopian by Philip the Apostle: “And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him” (Acts of the Ap. 8, 38).

Information on the activity of the 17th century painters of the Pechersk Monastery is unfortunately scanty, as few works have been preserved, and in 1718 most of the archival documents and paintings were destroyed by fire. The bulk of the surviving drawings and preparatory sketches for paintings datę from 18th century. It is known, however, that in the first half of the 17th century, the artists Fedir • Pavlov and Alimpi Galik were active at Pechersk, and that in 1653 the school was reorganized and Zakhariy Golubinskiy became its head.

Graphic works created at Pechersk were freąuently copied by local Kiev artists, as can be seen in the collection of drawings from the art studio of the Monastery (this collection is now kept in the Library of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev).³⁴ A Kievan drawing of St. Catherine of Alexandria clearly imitates the work of Schelte a Bolsfert, engraver of the Peter Paul Rubens school, active in Friesland and Antwerp. The Flemish engraving was copied from an oil painting by Rubens, whose current location is unknown.³⁵ The popularity of this graphic art is seen in the fact that it was copied by the author himself, and in the National Museum in Warsaw there is a reserved version of the same picture. There is also an oil painting by an unknown 18th century artist, based on the engraving of Bolsfert.

Another drawing in the Kiev collection, depicting the Return of the Holy Family from Egypt was probably executed by the same artist, who was also the author of a study of St. Catherine.³⁶ This work imitates an engraving of another artist, Comelis Galie. Several States of the engraving are known, as the artist altered the copper piąte several times. At the University Library in Warsaw there is a later print from of a retouched piąte, with a halo of rays added over the heads of Mary and of Christ. A stork with a snake in its beak in the left upper section has been obliterated; also the engraver’s name and a dedication to Juan Femandez Velasco are missing.³⁷ The en-graving reproduces Rubens’ oil painting dated 1614, currently in the Wadsworth Athe-neum collection in Hartfort (Conn.), while the preparatory drawing to the engraving is kept at the Louvre Museum. The Kiev drawing shown in this article was executed after Vorsterman, and probably copies the State now kept in Warsaw.

³³    M. K. Karger, Iz istorii zapadnyx vlianii v drevnerusskoi zhivopisi, Materiały po russkumu tskussłm, Leningrad 1928, p. 66-77.

³⁴    Fond 229: no. 1-48. Cf. P. Zholtovskyi, Malunki Kyevsko-Lavrskoi ikonopisnoi majstemi, KyiV 1982.

³ Fan den Wijgaert, Iiwentaris de Rubeniaansche prentekunst, Antwerpen 1940, p. 11; H Vliege, Coipus Rubenianum, Saints, VIII London 1972, nr 1, p. 100, nr. 69, il. 120.

³⁶    P. M. Zhołtovskij, op. cit., il. 26.

³⁷    Cf. C. G. Voorheim Schneevogt, Cathalogues des Estampes gravees d'apres Rubens, Haarlem 1873; Von Bruegel to Ruben. Dos Goldene Jahrhundert der flamischen Malerei, ex. Cat. [Koln, Antwerpen, Wien], Koln 1992, p. 583-610.