Efforts to save Ukraine’s sacred art are underway

Ukraine’s icons have been evacuated from Ukraine amid Russian missile bombardment and are now safely exhibited in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February last year, cultural artifacts and artworks have been “evacuated” to other European countries and are being protected.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that the Louvre Museum in Paris would exhibit five rare icons from Kyiv’s Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum under the title of “The Origins of the Sacred Image” from Wednesday. Icons, stylized painted portraits of Christ, the Holy Mother, and saints, are considered sacred in Eastern Orthodox churches.

Four of the icons, dating from the 6th and early 7th centuries, are paintings on wood from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai desert. The fifth is a micro-mosaic icon representing Saint Nicholas from late 13th or early 14th century Constantinople. These icons were evacuated with 11 other Ukrainian icons, which are currently safeguarded in the reserves of the Louvre, through Poland and Germany in May.

In October last year, part of the museum building was damaged by a missile strike 40 meters from its walls. After the missile strike, the museum collections have been hidden and relocated.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russians have been looting Ukraine’s art treasures. On November 22 last year, Russian forces stole ancient artifacts and cultural treasures, including the bone fragments of Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin, known as advisor to Catherine the Great, to Simferopol, the Crimean Peninsula. The works of art are reported to be kept in a concert hall in Simferopol’s art museum without appropriate protective measures. The Ukrainian government criticized the art theft by the Russians as a war crime, but Russia rebutted by saying that they took the artworks for protection.


Eun-A Cho achim@donga.com