Zaporozhian Cossacks, by Ilya Repin

 

http://surfacefragments.blogspot.com/2012/06/zaporozhian-cossacks-by-ilya-repin.html 

The group’s leader, Ivan Sirko (c.1610-1680), listens in intently, whilst puffing from his pipe, as the scribe jots down his every word, a wry smile escaping from his lips.

Ilya Repin famously portrayed the Cossacks as lusty brigands with sharp wits and even fouler tongues in his masterpiece, Zaporozhian Cossacks writing a letter to the Turkish Sultan.  The subject of the painting is the Cossacks refusal of the demand by the Turkish Sultan for their submission to his authority, and is a masterfully realized study in character.

It's easy to get lost in the theatricality of Repin's characters and forget that this painting was based on historical events and very real tensions between Russia and Turkey (which accounted for some of the popularity of the painting too). At the end of this post I reproduced the hilariously vulgar text of the actual letter. It reads like the whole "your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries" sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.