The icon which the Kosaches prayed to...
After restoration, a holy image will be added to the museum’s exhibition that once graced a village church often visited by Lesia Ukrainka, her parents, brothers and sisters. Director of Kamin-Kashyrsky Regional Studies Museum Natalia Pas found this icon of St. Nicholas over a decade ago at the Assumption Church in the village of Zapruddia. The village is famous for being the home of Lesia Ukrainka’s father Petro Kosach’s sister at the beginning of the past century. It was repeatedly visited not only by all the Kosaches, but the top figures of the time as well, like Ivan Franko and his family or composer Mykola Lysenko. The local church, built in 1795, still owns the Gospel donated by Lesia Ukrainka’s mother Olena Pchilka. Pas found the image of St. Nicholas... in the attic. As the icon needed urgent restoration, it was taken to Kyiv, where experts are working on it. The image is painted in the style of so-called folk art, but is valuable as a piece of memorabilia, a witness to the history of Volyn and the famous Kosach family.
The museum’s new exhibition presents a collection of sacred art, religious books, fabrics and vessels, made from the early 17th century to late 20th century. The collection effort started in 2002 during an expedition to Kamin-Kashyrsky raion which Volyn Regional Studies Museum conducted under the guidance of renowned Lviv-based historian and art critic Volodymyr Aleksandrovych. More valuable icons, signed by their creator Kasper Pysatsky (the artist’s name appears on icons only very rarely), were taken to the Museum of Volyn Icon, while the Kamin-Kashyrsky museum received several icons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Osivets Church of St. Paraskeva of the Balkans and manuscript The Akathist Hymn to Our Venerable Father Job of Pochaiv from Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Kamin-Kashyrsky. Subsequently, the museum received from Rakiv Lis Church of the Annunciation, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, 19th-century icons of St. Nicholas and the Virgin Mary of the Caves with Saints Anthony and Theodosius, a phelonion and an epitrachelion serving as examples of the 19th-century ecclesiastical embroidery, religious books and medals. Altar pieces of the early 17th century are a unique exhibit; they come from Kamin-Kashyrsky Nativity of Mary Church, which probably got the altar from the city’s Roman Catholic church. This makes the exhibit the oldest Catholic carved wooden altar in Volyn.
Natalia Malimon
