Back

Portrait of Jan Jakub Szymonowicz

Ostap Biliavskyi

Basic information

ID: Ж-4174
Author: Ostap Biliavskyi
Name: Portrait of Jan Jakub Szymonowicz
Date of creation: 18th c.
Country: Austrian Empire Austro-Hungarian Empire
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions: 61.5 x 48 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: portraiture
Provenance: Lviv Historical Museum

Information about author

Author: Ostap Biliavskyi
Author in the original: Ostap (Eustachy) Biliavskyi
Artist's lifetime: 1740–1803
Country: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, now Ukraine
Biography: Ostap (Eustachy) Biliavskyi (1740–1803) was a Ukrainian artist who worked in Western Ukraine. He is known for portrait paintings and religious artworks. He was born in the village of Horodyshche near Berezhany. In the 1760s, Ostap studied at the Academy of St. Luke in Rome. The artist lived and worked in Lviv after 1771. He executed numerous commissioned portraits of burgers. In the late 1790s and early 1800s, he created a gallery of portraits of Armenian archbishops. In addition to portrait painting, Ostap Biliavskyi was engaged in monumental painting. A significant collection of works by Ostap Biliavskyi has been preserved nowadays.

Object description

Jan Jakub Szymonowicz (1740–1816) was a Catholic priest; between 1801 and 1816 – Lviv archbishop of the Armenian Catholic Church. He was born into an Armenian family in Kamianets-Podilskyi. Jan Szymonowicz studied philosophy and theology in Lviv for six years. On August 11, 1764, he was ordained a priest. The man was proficient in many languages, particularly in Polish, Latin, German, French, and Italian. He was the dean of the theological faculty of the Lviv University, where he gave lectures in theology. In the late 1790s and up to the early 1800s, Ostap Biliavskyi created a gallery of portraits of Armenian Latin bishops, including the portrait of Jan Szymonowicz. The bishop is depicted in an illuminated oval. The artist managed to express the character of the balanced and educated person, as evidenced by a man’s high forehead and a piercing gaze from under thick dark eyebrows. The works by Ostap Biliavskyi are characterized by a masterful depiction of the individual features of the portrayed people.

Portrayed person