Description
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has failed to put a stop to the ongoing archaeological, architectural, and historical research on Baturyn, the capital of the early modern Cossack state. After a two-year pause caused by the war, and despite the ongoing military actions in eastern and southern Ukraine, limited excavations were resumed in Baturyn in 2024. The Baturyn Project is sponsored by CIUS and administered by the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the CIUS Toronto Office.
The project’s thirteenth annual booklet (Toronto, 2024, 36 pp. in Ukrainian, 37 colour illustrations) summarizes the extensive pre-war archaeological and architectural investigations on the remnants of the ruined principal residence of Hetman Ivan Mazepa in Baturyn (ca. 1700). It presents and discusses the hypothetical computer graphic reconstruction of the building’s original appearance. The authors examine the exterior design and decoration of Mazepa’s residence and compare it to the baroque aristocratic palaces, mansions, and villas of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Western Europe, showing the stimulating influences of Western architecture and art on Baturyn, which were promoted by the hetman. The brochure is illustrated with graphic reconstructions of his manor and photographs of excavated ornamental details and façade elements, including some that resemble palatial and monastic structures of 16th to 18th-century Cracow, Warsaw, Lublin, and Paris.
This project adds to the research on the heretofore little-studied residences of the hetmans and the European cultural connections in the Cossack capital. The total destruction of Baturyn by Russian forces in 1708 disrupted the evolution of this particular Western baroque palatial type in central Ukraine and suspended the architectural development of Baturyn for the period of 80 years.
