What did Hetman Ivan Mazepa look like?

October 14, 2016 This question has been discussed during the seminar held by the Poltava Battle Museum. Unfortunately there is no one credible painting or engraving of Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa that is why the question how did he look like is still the matter of topical interest for historians. The main report was delivered by the famous Ukrainian historian Olga Kovalevska from the Institute of Ukrainian History. 

To reconstruct a portrait of the Ukrainian Hetman she used special software that is used by the Security Service of Ukraine. The software was created to make a graphical representation of an eyewitness's memory of a face. Five most well known portraits and engravings of the Hetman were fed into computer and the obtained result was shown to conferees. On the picture below you can see all five initial portraits and the picture generated by the program. 

It should be noted that only face was created by the program, the rest was added by artist. For many present it was undoubtedly a new approach to solve such problem and, as a result, the report aroused great interest and many questions were put to the speaker.