In
accordance with the diary written by the Swedish fenrik Rober Petre, the fortress of
Poltava for the first time has been seen by the King Charles XII in the late April,
1709. He decided to lay this fortress in siege to force Tsar Peter I to dare to
the final battle of the Great Northern war. You know what happened next to the
Swedish army that found itself in the depth of Ukraine near some small town of Poltava…
Viktor Babenko and his vision of the fortress of Poltava in the time of the Great Northern war
Many
centuries had passed since 1607 when this fortress was built by the will of
then ruler of this part of Ukraine – Polish Hetman (a political
title from Central and Eastern Europe, historically assigned to military
commanders) Stanislav Zholkievsky. In 1658 the fortress was enlarged and reinforced.
What
our local historians are missing most of all, are old engravings, drawings, and
paintings showing how the fortress of Poltava looked many years ago. That is why Ukrainian painter Viktor Babenko who
lives in Poltava decided to reconstruct an appearance of the fortress using all
available documents including the diary written by Robert Petre.
I was happy to
give my translation of the diary to his disposal. On the picture you can see
the painter and his vision of the fortress. May be in the future this painting
will move to the Poltava Battle Museum.
The fortress of Poltava by Viktor Babenko
Historical
painting is only one side of such a many-sided personality of the painter.
Besides, he has created many paintings using Slavonic mythology. His paintings are available at
Hope
you will find them interesting.
0 comments:
Post a Comment