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« 2025. # 6 (186)

The Ethnology Notebooks. 2025. № 6 (186), 1361—1378

UDK 75.046. 3.017.4

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/

MASTER OLEKSY’S CREATIVE WORK IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN UKRAINIAN SACRED PAINTING OF THE 1540s—1570s

HELYTOVYCH Maria

Abstract. This study examines the creative legacy of Western Ukrainian painters and its relationship to the artistic environment of the 1560s–1570s, a period marking the final stage in the development of the Ukrainian icon within the Byzantine tradition. This phase warrants closer scholarly attention, as the preserved body of monuments provides ample material for analysis. Central to the study is the painter Oleksiy, regarded as the key master of the period and the first to indicate a gradual departure of Ukrainian icon painting from complete anonymity. His temple icon Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos (1547), preserved in the Church of St. Archangel Michael in Smilnyk, is a canonical example of Ukrainian art. Together with other works attributed to Oleksiy, it defines the principal artistic, stylistic, and technical characteristics of mid-sixteenth-century icon painting. The inscribed date on this icon has become an important reference point for dating other sixteenth-century works. On the basis of stylistic analysis, a broader group of monuments—including icons, mural paintings, and miniatures—can be associated with Oleksiy or, more precisely, with the artistic center in which he worked. To date, these works have not been examined as a cohesive stylistic circle.

This paper summarizes previous research on Oleksiy’s work and, for the first time, examines it within the broader context of mid-sixteenth-century Western Ukrainian icon painting. It offers a more precise systematization of monuments stylistically related to his oeuvre. The works of two anonymous painters, who worked in a manner close to Oleksiy, are also systematized here for the first time. Based on the provenance of their icons, they are provisionally identified as the Master of the Icons from Ilnyk and the Master of the Icons from Bahnuvate village. Both painters, like Oleksiy, were outstanding creative figures of their time. Their thematic and iconographic features are analyzed in comparison with Oleksiy’s works, with particular emphasis on the iconography of the Last Judgment. Special attention is given to its new iconographic and compositional version, exemplified by Oleksiy’s icon and serving as a key reference for the study of this thematic group of Ukrainian icons. The examined corpus of monuments clearly reflects the artistic and stylistic changes taking place in Ukrainian icon painting during this period.

All these monuments, in addition to providing a diverse and new iconographic material, demonstrate a high professional level that steadily declined in the last quarter of the 16th century, giving way to so-called folk masters. The relevance of the research is determined by the need for a more comprehensive coverage of the creative work of those icon painters from the past who played a special role in the formation of the national identity of Ukrainian art and influenced the development of artistic processes of their time.

Keywords: icon, master, tradition, iconography, 16th cen-tury. 

Received 30.08.2025

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