Saturday, March 10, 2018

Swedish painter who preserved an old Kyiv in his pencil drawings



Carl Peter Mazer [1807-1884], Swedish painter and photographer. In 1838 he moved from Helsingfors to St. Petersburg. In total, he spent 15 years in Russian Empire living in Yaroslavl, Moscow, Kyiv, and many other places. He traveled along the Volga with barge haulers from Nizhny Novgorod to Astrakhan, making sketches of life and nature. Early 1851 Carl Mazer opened a daguerreotype company in Moscow, where he worked until the end of the year. In 1852 he was busy with making both daguerreotype and photographic portraits. Besides he took orders for oil paintings copies, daguerreotype and watercolor portraits and engravings. But for Ukrainains his pencil drawings of Kiev are most valuable. Due to his masterpieces you may look at how main churches of our capital looked hundred years ago and now.


Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv is an outstanding architectural monument of Kyivan Rus. The cathedral is one of the city's best known landmarks and the first heritage site in Ukraine to be inscribed on the World Heritage List along with the Kiev Cave Monastery complex.


St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery is a functioning monastery in Kyiv. The monastery is located on the right bank of the Dnieper River on the edge of a bluff northeast of the Saint Sophia Cathedral. The site is located in the historic administrative Uppertown and overlooks the city's historical commercial and merchant quarter, the Podil neighborhood.


The Saint Andrew's Church  is a major Baroque church located in Kyiv. The church was constructed by design of the famous Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli. The church is part of the National Sanctuary "Sophia of Kiev" as a landmark of cultural heritage.

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