Painting by an unknown artist “Cossack Mamai”


The painting “Cossack Mamai” painted more than three hundred years ago by an artist whose name is not preserved. Since then, many unknown artists from the people have created many such paintings. In the foreground we see a Cossack sitting under a wide-brimmed young oak in the middle of a broad steppe. Near Mamaia there is a faithful black horse. He looks intently, does not move, there, in the steppe, the hiding enemy. The Cossack at the ready is the combat equipment: a musket, a flask and a quart, to drink honey. Behind him sticks spiked into the ground sharp spear. The saber hangs on the branch, fatigue does not know and never hurt. Mamai is dressed, as befits a Cossack, in wide trousers and a caftan.

The steppe is silent, quiet all around – the Cossack thinks. And the wind will fly, stir the wretched man on the Cossack’s head, unfurl a magnificent mustache. Mamai will start and play on his bandura:

I have a hope – a musket-burned. And the not yet rusty saber is my matchmaker.

No enemy could frighten him, for he, as legends tell us, will not win for anybody. Only saber his saber – so will the heads of the attackers roll. History shows that this Cossack was never in Zaporozhye. But there were thousands like him. In Mama, the collective image of Cossack Ukraine is reproduced. Such paintings have long been popular among the people, they decorated peasant huts.


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Painting by an unknown artist “Cossack Mamai”