09 / 17Artwork 9 of 17Virtual exhibition
The Poet – A Portrait
Mykola Syadristy1978
Taras Shevchenko's face and his hand holding a candle, carved from the shell of a blackthorn stone, 3 × 3 millimetres in size.
What to look for under the microscope
In numbers
- MaterialThe shell of a blackthorn (sloe) stone
- Size3 × 3 mm
- 1978Year created
The story
Taras Shevchenko was born a serf in 1814. In 1838 his friends raffled off a portrait of the poet Zhukovsky painted by Karl Bryullov, and used the 2,500 roubles it raised to buy his freedom. As a poet, he became the founder of Ukrainian national literature.
How it was made
The shell of a blackthorn stone is hard but brittle: one wrong move and it cracks. He carved the portrait with micro-chisels made of diamond. The play of light and shadow comes not from paint but solely from the depth of the carving.
Did you know?
Shevchenko was not only a poet but also a visual artist. He painted or drew more than 150 portraits, 43 of them self-portraits. In 1860 the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg named him an academician of engraving.
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