For 25 years until 2021, Ukrainian and Canadian archaeologists and historians carried out annual excavations in the town of Baturyn, Chernihiv Oblast (fig. 1). Unfortunately, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 suspended further field investigations. In the meantime, however, scholars at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta and the Hetman Capital National Historical and Cultural Preserve in Baturyn have continued their off-site research on the important artefacts, discovered during the extensive excavations in this town in 1995-2021.
The Canada-Ukraine Baturyn Archaeological Project is administered by The Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the CIUS Toronto Office (https://tinyurl.com/ypx3tdx2). Prof. Zenon Kohut, a former CIUS director and an eminent historian of the Cossack state, initiated this project in 2001 and he currently acts as its academic adviser and the co-author of our publications. Archaeologist Dr. Volodymyr Mezentsev, research associate at CIUS in Toronto, is the project’s executive director. Archaeologist Yurii Sytyi of the Hetman Capital National Preserve leads the Baturyn archaeological team.
So far, Baturyn has been spared from Russian occupation, bombardments, diversions, and destructions. Its five museums of antiquities, as well as the reconstructed citadel, hetman palaces, court hall, and churches of the 17th to 19th centuries, have been safely preserved and continue to receive many visitors (fig. 1).
In 1669, Baturyn was selected to be the capital of the Cossack realm, or Hetmanate. The town reached its zenith during the illustrious rule of Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1687-1709, figs. 1, 2). He was educated and brought up in the West and promoted European cultural influences in Ukraine.
In 1708, Mazepa, allied with Sweden, rebelled against the increasing curtailment of the political and administrative autonomy and self-governance of the Cossack polity by the autocratic Russian tsar Peter I. In retaliation, that same year, aided by local traitors, tsarist forces seized the Baturyn fortress, the stronghold of Mazepa’s uprising. In order to suppress it with ruthless terror, to avenge the unsubmissive hetman, and to punish the town for his support and the anti-Moscow revolt, the invaders executed in mass the captured Cossacks, slaughtered all of the civilians, up to 14,000 inhabitants of Baturyn, pillaged and burned it down, and took valuables to Russia.
Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky (1750-64) rebuilt and resettled the devastated Baturyn. He designated it again as the main city of the Cossack state, albeit not long before its abolition by the Russian empire in 1764. While Ukraine remained stateless, the former hetman capital steadily deteriorated, becoming an insignificant agricultural borough during the Soviet era.
In independent Ukraine, the government has implemented a program for the urbanization and revitalization of Baturyn. The Hetman Capital National Historical and Cultural Preserve has successfully ensured the conservation, study, and restoration of the 17-19th-century architectural monuments, the establishment and maintenance of five museums, impressive sculptural monuments and memorials glorifying the Cossack era, Mazepa, Rozumovsky, and other hetmans, and the memorialization of the victims of the 1708 Muscovite onslaught on the town, notwithstanding the current challenging conditions of wartime (figs. 1, 2).
In early modern Ukraine, the stoves faced with glazed ceramic and terracotta (unglazed) tiles or kakhli were standard for both heating and adorning residence interiors (figs. 1, 8). In Baturyn, the manufacturing of stove tiles flourished under Mazepa’s reign. They are ornamented primarily with plant and geometric relief patterns, but also with representations of Cossacks, European soldiers, angels, animals, mythical creatures, and coat of arms.
Prior to 1700, Mazepa constructed and opulently embellished his ambitious principal residence in the Baturyn suburb of Honcharivka. His palace was plundered and burned by Russian troops when they ravaged the town in 1708. The excavations of the palace’s remnants have yielded the best decorated stove tiles of about 30 variations. These artefacts are recognised as valuable specimens of Ukrainian ceramic art from the late 17th century. They were crafted by the most skilled tile-makers (kakhliari) of the Cossack state, whom Mazepa summoned from Kyiv.
Among the diverse stove tiles that archaeologists have unearthed from the debris of the Honcharivka palace, there are considerable amount of fragments of rectangular tiles featuring masterly reliefs of stylized heads of angels with outstretched wings (figs. 4-10). The more expensive tiles are glazed white, yellow, brown, and turquoise on a dark blue background, while the cheaper are terracotta with no enamel cover. The stove fronts were often revetted by glazed ceramic tiles, and plain terracotta ones were used on the sides.
On these tiles, the boyish faces of angels have the plump cheeks, massive noses, and on some fragments elongated chins. Their long yellow hair is slightly wavy, culminating on the top and bottom with ball-like curls. There are no haloes/nimbi over the angel’s heads. On the sides and bottom, their heads are enveloped by crescent-shaped stylized wings resembling a fan of white feathers. Some images of angels are more artistic, handsome, realistic, individual, and similar to their iconographic depictions. The lower corners of these tiles are ornamented with stylized lilies in relief.
Complete stove tile bearing the angel and covered with the multicoloured enamel. Hypothetical computer graphic reconstruction by S. Dmytriienko.
Using photo collage and computer graphic techniques, researchers have hypothetically reconstructed two complete glazed ceramic polychromatic and terracotta tiles with the above-described composition (figs. 6, 7, 10). This method has also been employed for the conjectural recreation of the front elevation of the upper part of the most costly and ornate glazed ceramic multicolour tiled stove of Mazepa’s destroyed palace in Honcharivka (fig. 8). It was an important adornment of its interior, located possibly in the gala hall for official receptions, meetings, and banquets.
We believe that after completing the richest stoves in Mazepa’s manor by the Kyivan masters they, or the engaged local ceramists, produced copies of more modest terracotta tiles with the reliefs of angels and sold them to the Cossacks or burghers for facing stoves in their homes in the Baturyn fortress and its vicinities (figs. 9, 10). Following the authoritative example of the hetman palace, this motif was widespread in the tiled stoves’ revetments throughout Mazepa’s capital in the early 18th century until its fall in 1708.
The 17th-18th-century stove tiles with angels discovered by the archaeologists in Kyiv are the closest analogies to those from Honcharivka. The excavations in Kyiv have also unearthed the shards of glazed ceramic polychrome table plates and dishes with the drawings and engravings of this image from that time.
The largest number of delineations of angels’ heads with two open wings is found in the book engravings printed in Kyiv and Chernihiv in the second half of the 17th and early 18th centuries, particularly during Mazepa’s tenure. They surmount four designs of his family coat of arms on the 1691, 1696, 1697, and 1708 etchings. In the Hetmanate, decorators of stove tiles often borrowed compositions, motifs, and ornaments from Ukrainian and Western engravings, mainly from book illustrations.
Reliefs of the heads of double-winged angels are casted in the corners of the silver gilt cover of the 1701 Gospel and on the precious facing plate (shata) of the icon of the Mother of God of Dihtiarivka from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Both of them were commissioned by Mazepa.
On display at the Hetman Capital National Preserve in Baturyn is the rare wooden icon of the Theotokos with the Baby Jesus (fig. 11). It likely dates to Mazepa’s era and could have belonged to him. In the icon’s corners, the high reliefs of four angel heads devoid of haloes with stylized extended wings are carved and painted in the Baroque style with folk colouring. Their child-like faces are quite realistic and each one is unique. The round rosy cheeks are somewhat enlarged more than these features of angels on the Honcharivka tiles.
The numerous dated Ukrainian engravings, the silver gilded covers of the Gospel and the icon, as well as the tiles bearing the heads of angels with outstretched wings from the facings of stoves of Mazepa’s villa and ordinary dwellings in the fortress and environs of Baturyn, testify to the popularity of this motif in both the secular and ecclesiastical arts of the Cossack state during his cadence. Perhaps, the hetman favoured it and ordered to incorporate these particular images into the designs of his heraldic emblem in several illustrations of Kyivan and Chernihivan publications, on precious repoussé works that he funded, and on the stove tiles of his headquarter.
In the mid-17th century, young Mazepa studied, served, and travelled in Poland, Germany, Holland, France, and Italy, and he was fascinated with European arts, literature, and culture. He could widely use the motif of angels/cherubs of the Renaissance tradition as a tribute to the art fashion then prevalent in the West and Kyiv, and as indication of his European cultural orientation (e.g., figs. 13-15).
In the second or third quarters of the 18th century, the façades of the Assumption Cathedral at the Kyivan Cave Monastery were embellished with massive rectangular glazed ceramic slabs featuring bas-reliefs of angels’ heads with outspread wings. After the explosion of this cathedral by the Bolsheviks in 1941, several of these details and their fragments were taken from the ruins for safekeeping to the repository of the National Preserve “Sophia of Kyiv” (fig. 12).
Generally, the designs of the angels on these slabs of the Assumption Cathedral and on the much smaller stove tiles from the Honcharivka palace are comparable. However, the palette and the combination of enamel colours on the cathedral’s façade applications are quite different. They are also distinguished by the haloes behind the angel’s heads which are inherent to the depictions of saints in Orthodox iconography but are lacking on the Honcharivka stove tiles. On these slabs from the cathedral, the bas-reliefs of the stylized faces and locks of hair are more massive, pronounced, thoroughly executed, and detailed. Some images of angels are comely and distinctive. But their cheeks protrude unnaturally, more so than those on the Baturyn stove tiles with this motif (cf. figs. 4-7, 9, 10, 12).
The described above façade’s slabs of the main church of the Cave Monastery in Kyiv contain the most artistic, expressive, and colourful representations of angels in the decorative sculpture and the majolica technique of Cossack Ukraine. These 18th-century Kyivan ceramic pieces vividly reflect the influences of European Humanism and Renaissance and Baroque arts. However, they were created in the post-Mazepa period, and, therefore, could not serve as the sources of inspiration for Kyiv’s and Baturyn’s tile-masters before the sack of the hetman capital in 1708.
The examined motif of bodiless angel with only head and two extended wings was not characteristic of the Orthodox iconography of Byzantium and Kyivan Rus’. It appeared in the 15th-century sacral art of Renaissance Italy (e.g., 14, 15). From there, the angels/cherubs (putti in Italian) as a religious symbol, and later increasingly as merely ornamental element, were disseminated in both ecclesiastical and secular sculpture and painting all over Christendom during the 16th-18th centuries. At that time, this motif was also transferred to Ukraine primarily via Poland. It became favourite in the sculptural and pictorial decorations of Catholic and Orthodox churches, monasteries, castles, palaces, crypts, tombs, as well as in the secular and icon paintings, book graphics, artistic metal and earthen wares of Western and Central Ukraine.
In the 16th and early 17th centuries, invited Italian sculptors and painters introduced this motif to the arts of Galicia, Volhynia, and Kyiv, then under Polish rule. Since that time, the Kyivan tile-makers could model the reliefs and frescoes of putti in the late Renaissance style which adorned the interiors of the Assumption and St. Sophia cathedrals, as well as their delineations on Western and Ukrainian Baroque engravings, book illustrations, Catholic icons, European secular painting, toreutics, and other artistic imports.
We surmise that Kyiv’s tile-masters were also familiar with the stove tiles produced in Poland and, moreover, with those from Right-Bank Ukraine within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The similar features of the representations of putti on the 16th to 18th-century Ukrainian and Polish stove tiles support this view. Noteworthy are the Polish stove tiles of this time that usually bear reliefs of the stylized angels with chubby cheeks and no haloes. Their faces and wings are commonly glazed white against a cobalt background like the colouration of stove tiles with this image from the Honcharivka palace (cf. figs. 4-7, 9, 10, 13).
Analogous designs and ornamentations of puttis’ heads, hair styles, and wings are observed in the early modern sculptural embellishments of many ecclesiastical and funerary structures in Poland, Western Ukraine, and Italy. These sculptures have influenced the interpretation of this motif on ceramic stove tiles in Poland and Ukraine. In the 16th-18th century, the tile-makers could use as models or prototypes the numerous chiselled stone, stucco, and wooden painted high reliefs of putti, predominantly in a realistic manner, as displayed in the Catholic and Orthodox churches, cloisters, elite tombstones and sarcophagi. See two examples of these early modern sculptures in Rome and Florence (figs. 14, 15).
The stove tiles with angels discussed in this article are some of the best and representative pieces of the decorative-utilitarian ceramics of Baturyn during its golden age under Mazepa. The glazed multicoloured tiles have derived from the most lavish and exquisite stoves of his ruined principal residence in the Cossack capital and attest to its wealth and fine art adornments (figs. 4-8). They are rare relics of the hitherto inadequately studied palatial designs of the 17th-century Cossack rulers.
These artefacts provide a valuable insight into the culture, way of life, and artistic interests of Mazepa, the Cossacks or burghers of Baturyn, and their reception of the stimulating artistic fashions from Kyiv and the West. Thus, our research of the images on the stove tiles excavated by the archaeologists in Baturyn shed new light on the vibrant culture of the Cossack Ukraine capital and its link to European Christian civilization.
The annihilation in 1708 by Russian forces of Mazepa’s stronghold including its defenders and civilian population tragically halted life in this town for 42 years. Along with all major crafts and artistic endeavours, the local manufacturing of relief stove tiles came to an end. During the rebuilding of Baturyn by Hetman Rozumovsky in the second part of the 18th century, two-colour glazed ceramic stove tiles were imported. They feature secular scenes in then-popular Dutch style and are devoid of any Ukrainian and religious motifs.
These authors have examined the depictions of angels on the stove tiles discovered in the hetman capital in more details in a nicely published and richly illustrated booklet titled Янголи у декорі палацу Івана Мазепи в Батурині: за матеріалами розкопок (Angels in the Decoration of Ivan Mazepa’s Palace in Baturyn: A Study Based on Archaeological Findings), Toronto: “Homin Ukrainy”, 2023, 40 pp. in Ukrainian, 49 colour illustrations (fig. 3). This twelfth issue and earlier brochures in the Baturyn project series are available for purchase for $10 from the National Executive of the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC) in Toronto (tel.: 416-516-8223, email: luc@lucorg.com) and through CIUS Press in Edmonton (tel.: 780-492-2973, email: cius@ualberta.ca). The booklets can also be purchased online on the CIUS Press website (https://www.ciuspress.com; https://www.ciuspress.com/product-category/archaeology/?v=3e8d115eb4b3). Their publications were funded by BCU Foundation (Roman Medyk, chair) and Ucrainica Research Institute (Orest Steciw, M.A., president and executive director of LUC) in Toronto.
In 2023, the popular and authoritative Archaeology magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America, N.Y., published an important article about Baturyn as a bastion of Cossack independence and culture, its utter destruction by the Russian army, and some interesting archaeological finds at the site (https://www.archaeology.org/issues/522-2309/features/11638-ukraine-baturyn-cossack-capital).
Since 2001, CIUS and Ucrainica Research Institute have sponsored the Canada-Ukraine Baturyn Project. The Ukrainian Studies Fund in New York also supports this project with annual subsidies. In 2023-24, the research on the history and culture of the hetman capital and the preparation of associated publications were supported with donations from Ucrainica Research Institute, LUC National Executive (Borys Mykhaylets, president), LUC – Toronto Chapter (Mykola Lytvyn, president), League of Ukrainian Canadian Women National Executive (LUCW, Halyna Vynnyk, president), LUCW – Toronto Chapter (Nataliya Popovych, president), BCU Financial (Oksana Prociuk-Ciz, former CEO), Ukrainian Credit Union (Taras Pidzamecky, CEO), Prometheus Stefan Onyszczuk and Stefania Szwed Foundation (Mika Shepherd, president), and Benefaction Foundation in Toronto. The most generous individual benefactors of the Baturyn study are Olenka Negrych, Dr. George J. Iwanchyshyn (Toronto), and Dr. Maria R. Hrycelak (Park Ridge, IL).
In July, we plan to resume the excavations in Baturyn, if the wartime conditions in Chernihiv Oblast permit. In any event, both Ukrainian and Canadian scholars will continue their off-site research, publications, and public presentations on the history and culture of the hetman capital.
With the start of the full-scale Russian war against Ukraine, the Chernihiv Oblast State Administration suspended its funding of the Baturyn archaeological project. Therefore, continued benevolent support from Ukrainian organizations, foundations, companies, and private donors in North America is vital to sustain further historical, archaeological, and artistic investigations of Mazepa’s capital and the publication of the findings. Canadian citizens are kindly invited to mail their donations by cheque to: Ucrainica Research Institute, 9 Plastics Ave., Toronto, ON, Canada M8Z 4B6. Please make your cheques payable to: Ucrainica Research Institute (memo: Baturyn Project).
American residents can send their donations to: Ukrainian Studies Fund, P.O. Box 24621, Philadelphia, PA 19111, USA. Cheques should be made payable to: Ukrainian Studies Fund (memo: Baturyn Project). These Ukrainian institutions will issue official tax receipts to all donors in Canada and the United States. They will be gratefully acknowledged in related publications and public lectures.
For additional information about the Baturyn project, please contact Dr. Volodymyr Mezentsev in Toronto (tel.: 416-766-1408, email: v.mezentsev@ utoronto.ca). Project participants express gratitude to Ukrainians in North America for their generous continuous support of the research on the capital of Cossack Ukraine and for helping to preserve its national cultural legacy and historical memory, which are falsified and destroyed by the Russian Federation.
Among the diverse stove tiles that archaeologists have unearthed from the debris of the Honcharivka palace, there are considerable amount of fragments of rectangular tiles featuring masterly reliefs of stylized heads of angels with outstretched wings (figs. 4-10). The more expensive tiles are glazed white, yellow, brown, and turquoise on a dark blue background, while the cheaper are terracotta with no enamel cover. The stove fronts were often revetted by glazed ceramic tiles, and plain terracotta ones were used on the sides.
