Shymonovych (the Elder), Yurii

Shymonovych (the Elder), Yurii or Symeonovych [Шимонович or Симеонович, Юрій; Šymonovyč or Symeonovyč, Jurij; Polish: Jerzy Szymonowicz], b ca 1620, d 15 April 1690 in Yavoriv, Rus’ voivodeship. Galician painter and engraver; father of Yurii Shymonovych-Semyhynovsky. The first researcher of his legacy (in 1822), Sadok Barącz, considered Shymonovych to be of Armenian origin, but later finds unequivocally demonstrated that he was a Ukrainian (Ruthenian) painter. According to his family tradition, passed on by his more famous son, Shymonovych hailed from the Semyhynovsky gentry of the Stryi region. Little is known of his early career and schooling. We know that in 1648 he was closely related, through marriage, to the Korunka family of painters and artisans and lived and worked together with them in Lviv. According to his son, Shymonovych the Elder did not wish to be a servitor artisan to any patron and he traveled extensively on various assignments. In the late 1660s and early 1670s he worked in Stanyslaviv for the Potocki family. Around 1674 he returned to Lviv and soon became one of the first appointed painters to the court of King Jan III Sobieski. Having established close relations with the king, Shymonovych earned for himself (ca 1680) a post of a reeve of the royal town of Yavoriv, which he kept until the end of his life. His closeness to the royal family (documented, for example, in 1687) must have had a decisive impact on the career of his later famous son Yurii Shymonovych-Semyhynovsky, who was sent by the king to study at Saint Luke’s Academy in Rome. Based on the known facts of his biography, Shymonovych the Elder must have been one of the leading Galician painters of his time. Unfortunately, very few artworks have been definitively attributed to him.

Marko Robert Stech

[This article was written in 2025.]