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Tarasevych, Leontii

Image - Leontii Tarasevych: SS Vasylii and Fedir of the Caves; Kyivan Cave Patericon (1702). Image - Leontii Tarasevych: Consecration of the Cathedral of the Assumption; Kyivan Cave Patericon (1702). Image - Engraving of the plan of the Far Caves of the Kyivan Cave Monastery by Leontii Tarasevych (in a book printed by the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press in 1703). Image - Leontii Tarasevych: Nestor the Chronicler; Kyivan Cave Patericon (1702).
Image - Leontii Tarasevych: Arrival of Icon Painters from Constantinople; Kyivan Cave Patericon (1702).

Tarasevych, Leontii [Тарасевич, Леонтій; Tarasevyč, Leontij], b ca 1650, probably in Transcarpathia, d 1710 in Kyiv. Master engraver. He and his brother, Oleksander Tarasevych, learned engraving in Augsburg at the workshop of B. and P. Kilian. In 1680–8 he worked in Vilnius, where he engraved illustrations for the Basilian, Franciscan, and Jesuit presses there. From 1688 he worked in Ukraine, first in Chernihiv (see Chernihiv Press) and then in Kyiv at the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press under the patronage of Metropolitan Varlaam Yasynsky. Tarasevych engraved portraits of prominent Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians, including Hetman Ivan Mazepa; portrayals of the Catholic and Orthodox saints; heraldic and corporation crests; theses of scholarly disputes at the Vilnius Academy and Kyivan Mohyla Academy, decorated with many symbols, allegories, and saints; and book illustrations, notably 45 engravings for the Kyivan Cave Patericon printed by the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press in 1702. Tarasevych helped establish the art of copper engraving in Ukraine and created some of the best works in Ukrainian baroque graphic art. A book about him by Dmytro Stepovyk was published in Kyiv in 1986.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]


Image - Leontii Tarasevych: Saint Anthony of the Caves (Patericon, 1702). Image - Leontii Tarasevych: Saint Ephrem (Patericon, 1702). Image - Leontii Tarasevych: Saint Theodosius of the Caves (Patericon, 1702). Image - Leontii Tarasevych: The Passion of Yevstratii (Patericon 1702). Image - Leontii Tarasevych: The Oziv (Azov) Mother of God. Image - Leontii Tarasevych: A portrait of Vasilii Golitsin (1680s). Image - Leontii Tarasevych: a frontispiece in Patericon 1702.

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