"Miraculous Marian Icons of the Armenians of Ukraine" - Irina Gayuk
Irina Gayuk's article is devoted to the history of the miracle-working Marian icons of the Armenian community of Ukraine, their origin, attribution, and dramatic fates in the context of the religious and political upheavals of the 15th–20th centuries.
Introduction and Methodology
The author reconstructs the history of four famous Armenian miracle-working icons of the Mother of God, drawing on archival documents, testimonies of art historians (M. Gębarowicz, J. Chrząszczewski, B. Janusz, H. Sheremeta), the memoirs of contemporaries (M. Gruneweg), and materials from the 1932 exhibition of Armenian culture in Lviv. Particular attention is paid to the problem of attribution and dating of the works, as well as to questions of their preservation after the liquidation of the Armenian Catholic Church in Ukraine in 1945.
The Kamianets Armenian Mother of God
The author examines the version of the icon's Crimean origin, connected with the activity of Armenian Catholic (Uniate) monasteries of the 14th–15th centuries. The author points out the contradictions in this hypothesis: the 16th-century dating coincides with the period of decline of the Crimean Armenian colonies after the Turkish conquest. The icon is now kept in the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum.
The Mother of God of Jazłowiec (Yazlivets)
The complex and largely contradictory history of the icon is traced: its dating to 1423, disputed versions concerning a gift from the Koniecpolski family, the transfer of the image from Jazłowiec to Brody, and then to Lviv, where in 1710 the Armenian Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception was established. After 1945 the icon passed through the Lviv Historical Museum to the Lviv Gallery of Arts (since 1954).
The Stanisławów Mother of God, the Merciful Guardian
The article discusses the history of the icon, painted in the early 16th century, presumably by an Armenian named Daniel. Special attention is given to the miracle of 1742 (the weeping of the icon), confirmed by a Vatican commission, and to the preparations for its coronation in the 1930s, which were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. After 1945 the icon was secretly taken to Poland and is now located in the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul in Gdańsk.
The "Byzantine Madonna" and the Discovery of the Hodegetria
The fate of the icon, originally located in the Lviv Roman Catholic Cathedral (1532), then transferred to the Armenian Cathedral and "renewed" in 1586 and 1622—which gave the image Armenian features—is reconstructed. The author presents a version attributing its authorship to the family of painters named Bohusz. After the icon's disappearance in 1945 and its subsequent reappearance in 2000 in the Lviv Gallery of Arts, restorers discovered beneath the upper layer an earlier icon of the Hodegetria by a 14th-century Ukrainian master; the 16th-century Armenian image survives only in a photograph from 1932.
Conclusion
The author concludes that the history of the Armenian miracle-working Marian icons of Ukraine reflects a complex interweaving of cultural traditions, confessional transformations, and the tragic historical events of the 20th century. Despite the losses and the contradictory attribution versions, a significant part of these monuments has survived and continues to bear witness to the substantial contribution of the Armenian community to the artistic and spiritual heritage of the region.
How four miracle-working Marian icons of Ukraine's Armenian community changed, were rescued, and traveled across centuries of religious and political upheaval — down to the discovery of an older layer beneath one of the images.
Palimpsest of Sacred Identity