Cossack Baroque

Cossack (Ukrainian) Baroque (1650–1750) was the national variant of the European Baroque that flowered in the age of the Hetmanate and became the golden age of Ukrainian culture. Its rise is tied to the patronage of the Cossack officer class, above all Hetman Ivan Mazepa, whose foundations defined the era's face. Its architecture is marked by opulence, multi-tiered massing, pear-shaped cupolas, decorative gables and white masonry adorned with stucco. Under Mazepa, Kyiv's St Sophia was remodelled, the Rus-era Trinity Gate Church (1106–1108) was restored, and the All Saints' Church over the Lavra's Economic Gate was raised, along with the Military St Nicholas and Epiphany cathedrals and churches in Chernihiv and Pereiaslav. Models of the five-domed Baroque church became the St George Cathedral of the Vydubychi Monastery and St Catherine's in Chernihiv. The centre of learning and art was the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy — nursery of theologians, poets and engravers, among whom the Kyiv school of engraving stands out (Oleksandr and Leontiy Tarasevych, Ivan Shchyrsky). Painting cultivated the ceremonial Cossack portrait, donor images and the folk icon "Cossack Mamai." The era's iconostases astonish with carved gilded plasticity, such as the celebrated Bohorodchany iconostasis of the master Yov Kondzelevych. Ukrainian Baroque also nourished literature — sermons, verse, drama and the Cossack chronicles of Samiylo Velychko and Hryhoriy Hrabianka. Mazepa's defeat at Poltava in 1709 and the curtailing of Hetmanate autonomy gradually extinguished this brilliant style, which remained a symbol of Ukrainian statehood culture.