Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s mother

Did you know that Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s mother (known as Maria Magdalyna in her monastic name) for about 25 years was a hegumeness in the female Ascension Monastery, which stood on the land of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and was under the spiritual subordination of Pechersk Archimandrite?

She died right there in late 1707. There are a lot of legends associated with this figure. For example, the portrait of the unknown woman from the National Museum in Krakow is mistakenly taken for the life image of Maria Magdalyna Mazepa.

This portrait was donated to the art gallery in 1906 along with other artworks. The donor wrote that those were portraits of some unknown wives of Ukrainian prosperous class of Cossacks. At first the portrait was recorded as “the image of Magdalyna from Voynarovsky Mazepa family”. Later the Polish researcher suggested (having no convincing evidence) that it was Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s mother.

The demand for visualization of such a famous person was too great, that is why that palatable option became popular. It was later, when looking at the clothes of the young lady on the portrait and the image of Milyatyn Crucifixion (recognized as miraculous only in 1755), it became understandable that the portrait was created after that.

Olga Krainya

Captions to the illustrations:
1. Portrait of the unknown woman from the exposition of the National Museum of Krakow, which was not the “portrait of Ivan Mazepa’s mother” 
2. Document of 1665 with the name of the Hetman’s mother (known as lady Marianna Mokievska by her born name), (Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv, fund 28, file 103)
3. Signature of hegumeness Maria Magdalyna Mazepa from the document of 1701, which is considered to be handwritten (“Kyiv antiquity” magazine, № 3, 1898)