(Mis)understanding the Cossack Icon

The iconography of the Pokrova developed in Ukraine under strong Western influence, allowing painters to depict the Mother of God and the saints along with images of tsars and tsarinas, which replaced depictions of Byzantine emperors and empresses, as well as images of the Cossack officers who sponsored the icons.9 One such Cossack icon was the Pereiaslav Pokrova, which was transferred from wood to canvas. In an illustrated history released by the same Kyiv publisher that issued Umantsev's book, the art historian and Orthodox activist Dmytro Stepovyk presents the Pokrova icons as the embodiment of Ukraine's incessant struggle with its three oppressors: the Ottoman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Muscovy (later the Russian Empire).