Volodymyr Borovykovsky

Portrait of Volodymyr Borovykovsky by Ivan Bugayevsky-Blagodarny

Volodymyr Lukych Borovykovsky (1757-1825) was the son of a Ukrainian Cossack and amateur icon painter named Luka Borovyk. Volodymyr caught the attention of Empress Catherine II when he painted two allegoric paintings of her at the request of his friend, Vasyl Kapnist, who was preparing to accommodate the empress during her trip to the newly conquered Crimea. Catherine II was so pleased with his work that he moved to Saint Petersburg and changed his surname to ‘Borovykovsky,’ which sounded more aristocratic than ‘Borovyk.’ He studied under Dmytro Levytsky and became a popular portrait painter, creating about 500 portraits during his lifetime. After 1819, Borovykovsky was a Freemason and a member of the Lodge of the Dying Sphinx. He became predominantly a painter of icons, including some for the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1825 and was buried in the Lazarus Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg.