Levytsky, Hryhorii K.

Levytsky, Hryhorii K. [Левицький, Григорій; Levyc’kyj, Hryhorij] (né Nis), b ca 1697 in Maiachka, Poltava regiment, d 19 May 1769 in Maiachka. Baroque master engraver and painter. Levytsky studied engraving in Wrocław (until 1735). From ca 1738–41 he was an Orthodox priest in Maiachka and continued to do engravings for the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press. Over 40 of his engravings illustrate the press's Gospel (1737), Psalter (1737), and Apostolos (1737–8 and 1752), the title pages and ornamentation of Kyivan Mohyla Academy students' theses in verse, such as those in honor of Roman Kopa (after 1730), Ivan Nehrebetsky (1738), Metropolitan Rafail Zaborovsky (1739), and Dymytrii Tuptalo (1752). He also prepared four engraved boards for Mykhail Kozachynsky's collection of theses on Aristotle's philosophy (Lviv 1745), containing portraits, coats of arms, cartouches, allegories, symbols, views of Kyiv's architectural monuments, genre scenes, and Oleksii Rozumovsky's family tree. In 1753–6, together with his son, Dmytro H. Levytsky, and Aleksei Antropov, Levytsky painted rococo murals inside Saint Andrew's Church in Kyiv. A book about him by V. Fomenko was published in Kyiv in 1976.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]