The vernissage is part of a intermuseum collaboration project. It was organized by the Andrei Sheptytsky National Museum (Lviv). Visitors are invited to acquaint themselves with unique Ukrainian artworks. Let us remind that the collection was started back in 1905, when the museum was founded by the then metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. It covers a prosperous period for banners in Ukraine and its value goes beyond Lviv.
Ukrainian banners represent an original and little-investigated phenomenon of national culture and art. They are a reflection of the most important part of our nation’s spiritual life. They show ambiguous and sometimes difficult periods in history, art tastes and cultural tendencies. The banner is a symbol that always played a ceremonial and representative role. They usually belonged to the most respected shrines of the nation and were used for various rituals and customs.
Just like many European artworks of that time, the Ukrainian banners of the 17th-early 20th centuries can be distinguished by content and artistic trend. They can be military, craft-shop, church and magistrate. The last depict city symbols, of localities with Magdeburg Rights. The military banners mostly consist of Cossack army banners from the 17th-early 20th centuries, and they played an informative role in wartime. As the banners were aimed to be recognized from a distance, they are typically ornamental and colorful. The main part of the exhibition is made up of gonfalons. According to the decree of King Sigmund I The Old, issued in 1512, gonfalons were used. The decree confirmed the rights of churches, including the right to take the gonfalons out from temples during religious ceremonies. It was actually a response to a complaint by the Przemysl bishop Antonii about the oppression of Orthodox eparchies.
An image of a saint from the Scripture or day was obligatory on a gonfalon. The gonfalons were developed in close relation to icon-painting. Unlike military, craft-shop and territorial banners, which are almost gone or were dramatically modified, the gonfalons we have today hardly changed.
Funeral gonfalons take a special place in the exhibit. Usually, they were divided into two types: epitaphic and sorrowful. Epitaphic gonfalons had a special purpose — to immortalize people of high military rank. This tradition developed when funerals of knights were accompanied with banners, which were later left on their grave. The sorrowful gonfalons, usually made in dark colors, depicted allegoric compositions related to the funeral ritual and expressed the idea of death in Christian understanding. Such gonfalons were not widely spread in Ukrainian churches as Eastern Christian culture emphasizes Christ’s resurrection and victory, not his passions.
A banner of the Sokil sports and patriotic society from Lviv, made in 1911, is a rarity. The story of the exhibit is interesting as it was supposed to be lost for a long time. According to the Taras Franko’s notes, the banner was confiscated by the police on the Yanivsky cemetery during a memorial service for the Ukrainian soldiers who perished in battles in 1918. It is the only banner of Lviv military and patriotic organizations that the people managed to save in the 1950s during the expropriation and destruction campaigns of the “nationalistic works.”
The pearl of the exhibit is the National Guard’s banner from Yavoriv, a historic monument, which is dated 1848 (and depicts a golden lion climbing a rock). Doctor Kyrylo Tryliovsky notes in his diary that this banner was exhibited in Vienna in 1916.
