“...So we were able to love Ukraine as much as Kobzar did”

The little town of Pereiaslav-Khmelnytsky is famous for its 35 museums. One of the most visited ones is the Museum of Taras Shevchenko’s Testament. It got this name on April 18, 2008, and before that it was a local history museum. It is crowded all the time, there are about ten excursions here every day during the season and a bit less during the summer. The museum often welcomes visitors from Moscow and St. Petersburg, Poland, and Germany, and recenlty they had guests from Finland, as we were told by the research staff.

It is not without a reason that the Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church His Beautitude Volodymyr (Sabodan) Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine, who is a great admirer, collector, and expert on Taras Shevchenko’s works, picked this museum to hold the exhibition of his collection.

“This is a small exhibit, but it’s extremely valuable because of all the rare editions presented here and because this is Metropolitan Volodymyr’s personal collection. Metropolitan admires the works of the great Kobzar. People who are close to him say that if there’s an opportunity to quote Shevchenko for a certain occasion, he’ll do it by all means,” Olena Kalynovska, senior researcher of the museum, told The Day. “Metropolitan Volodymyr’s personal Shevchenkiana has been displayed here for four times already. It was exposed at the Kyiv Cave Monastery before that.”

We would like to express great gratitude to the staff of the Lavra Museum, Metropolitan Volodymyr, Mother Superior Seraphyma, who contributed to the putting this exhibit on display at our museum again. The gem of this collection is a Hryhorii Chestakhivsky’s icon. He was Shevchenko’s friend, and the initiator and mastermind of Shevchenko’s reburial at Chernecha Hora in Kaniv. The contemporaries considered him to be not only a great artist but a talented icon painter as well. Chestakhivsky painted it in 1877 and gave it to the church for the peace of Shevchenko’s soul. Archbishop of Pereiaslav-Khmelnytsky and Vyshnev Oleksandr, Metropolitan Volodymyr’s secretary, who was present at the launch of the exhibit, said that this icon had been found by accident 10 years before.

The Passion of Christ, another icon that is being exhibited at the Shevchenko’s Testament Museum, was painted somewhere near Cherkasy in 1861, the year Shevchenko died, by an unknown author. The exhibits themselves are valuable because a part of them are editions published during Shevchenko’s lifetime, there are also items from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are also present-day exhibits, also rare, like Kobzar printed in Japanese, for example. According to the museum staff, information about many artists, authors of Shevchenko’s portraits that are in Metropolitan’s collection, is lost. And there is a large portrait of Shevchenko that was painted some time in the 1950s-1960s, an embossed portrait dating back to the end of 1911, and an embroidered portrait. The exposition of literary editions is quite large and interesting as well. Most of the editions were made during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The most precious exhibit is perhaps an edition of Kobzar that was published in Shevchenko’s lifetime, in 1860. There are also editions published in 1876 and 1918. The visitors will inevitably notice the magazine Osnova that was published the year following Shevchenko’s death. Also among the exhibits of the museum there are embroidered modern folk style pictures, ceramic plates with Kobzar’s portrait on them, newspapers and postcards dating back to the 19th century with images of Shevchenko. As Kalynovska told us, at the launch of the exhibit Archbishop Oleksandr presented a replica of the Peresopnytsia Gospels (printed by the Orthodox Church to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the actual Peresopnytsia Gospels) to the museum on behalf of Metropolitan.

“We know that Metropolitan gives various items from his collection to museums, so we are going to ask for some things for our museum as well. We have a few books in mind. Among them is a lifetime edition of Kobzar, and also a very interesting book on Shevchenko’s religious views, and the reminiscences of Shevchenko’s contemporaries about the poet. These books are very rare and inaccessible to a wide circle of readers. Peresopnytske Yevanhelie (Peresopnytsia Gospels) by Ivan Ohiienko, published in 1930, is a very rare book, it’s not about Shevchenko, but about the Peresopnytsia Gospels. Taras Shevshenko as a Painter is another interesting book,” said Kalynovska.

This museum is called the Museum of Taras Shevchenko’s Testament because on December 25, 1845, Shevchenko wrote his Zapovit (Testament) here. The house belonged to Andrii Kozachkovsky, Shevchenko’s friend. It was built in 1820 by Yosyp Kozachkovsky, Andrii’s father, chancellor of Pereiaslav theology schools, whose ancestors were all religious ministers. Andrii Kozachkovsky met Shevchenko in St. Petersburg in 1845. This acquaintance grew into a strong friendship that lasted for the rest of their lives. Shevchenko was invited and came over four times. During one of his visits, he and Kozachkovsky planted two acacias at the gate. Before planting, they intertwined the trees. One of the acacias died, but the other one is still there.

“The house outlasted a few generations of the Kozachkovsky family, the revolution, the Great Patriotic War; once it housed an orphanage as well, and finally it came to be a museum. There were severe battles here in 1943, the house was bombed a few times, the second floor was destroyed by a shell. We didn’t rebuild it, but we turned 12 rooms on the first floor into 12 museum halls. We preserved two rooms with their original settings, Kozachkovsky’s study and the guest room in which Shevchenko wrote his Testament. A chest of drawers in the guest room is an authentic piece, it belonged to Kozachkovsky’s wife. The rest of the furniture was made in Kyiv and Poltava provinces in the 19th century,” said Kalynovska. “There’s a carved desk made by Kozachkovsky, it’s one of the most interesting exhibits of the museum. Kozachkovsky was a talented professional surgeon and a gifted wood-carver as well. He didn’t like what was sold at that time, so he spent a couple of years and made a wonderful desk himself, it even had secret drawers.”

In the guest room, where Shevchenko wrote his Testament, his paintings are hung now – the sights of the town which he painted during his first visit, on August 19, 1845. This was a commission from the Kyiv Geographical Committee that had a contract with Shevchenko. There is also a shrine of Pereiaslav-Khmelnytsky painted by Shevchenko, the myrrh-pouring Borysivsky Cross. It was placed there in 1661 on the spot of Prince Borys’s assassination. Later the cross began to pour myrrh, as the guides say, and it still goes on even today, in one of the churches of the town, where the cross is placed now.

Everything in this museum shows deep respect for our history, Shevchenko’s works, and, of course, for the future of Ukraine, reminding of the high standards. It is thus worth quoting the words said by Metropolitan Volodymyr: “Taras Shevchenko is a personality that impresses us with his love for Ukraine. I think that Shevchenko wasn’t afraid of death because he was a religious person. But he dreamt of being buried in the Ukrainian land. And this happened thanks to God’s blessing. Shevchenko’s life and work reveal his love for Ukraine, for every person, and remind that we should respect our motherland, because this is the only one we have. Therefore, let’s be aware of our high mission, our love for Ukraine, so we could love it like Taras Shevchenko did.”