Dear Friends!

Take a trip to our virtual museum during your coffee or tea break and make your #quarantinediscoveries!

Admire unique cultural assets of the Museum Fund of Ukraine!

Today, when the pandemiа-ridden world remains at home in quarantine, family values and traditions became especially important. The icon "Selected Saints" of 1845 from the Preserve’s collection tells us about family values in the 19th century. It is a rare example of patronal icons, where the chronicle of a big family is represented by means of the icon-painting language.

The icon features 16 saints standing on clouds in poses of prayerful Intercession with Christ. We can see below a landscape with a church, from where the path leads to a two-storey brick house with a high fence. Two tall trees are growing nearby and eight smaller trees around them.

According to the inscription "Offering to the parents from their children on July 8, 1845. In memory of July 8, 1795", the icon was ordered by the children as a gift to their parents on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of their married life - for a "golden wedding".

During the research of the icon, it was found out that it belonged to the family of well-known Kyiv confectioners Balabukh. It was for the "golden wedding" of the head of the family Semen and his wife Anna that the icon was painted. Since the 1790s Semen Balabukha (1771–1853) has specialized in the production of the famous Kyiv dry jam and even got a monopoly right for this activity. Later, his two sons continued the father's business.

The large Balabukh family, in which parents were treated with respect and love and family traditions were respected, belonged to the parish of the Dormition Church in Kyiv’s Podil district, depicted on the icon.

Let’s #stayathome and discover the beauties of the Preserve’s collection together!

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