A. Westerfeld's drawing “Meeting of Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Ambassadors with Janusz Radziwill” as a historical source

Research aim. To describe all known copies of Abraham Westerfeld's drawing “Meeting of Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Ambassadors with Janusz Radziwill” and, combining the plot with descriptions of the depicted event in written sources, to evaluate it as a historical source. Research methodology. The research is based on the principles of objectivity and historicism, and includes methods of analysis and synthesis, comparative and art historical analysis. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the original drawing by A. Westerfeld, which is kept in the National Art Museum of Ukraine (Kyiv), is analysed in detail – the technique of execution, the depicted persons and the room. Conclusions. Reproduced in copies of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, A. Westerfeld's 1653 drawing “Meeting of Ambassadors Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Janusz Radziwill” is an important reliable source on the history of Eastern Europe in the mid-seventeenth century. It reflects a meeting of Cossack centurions Stepan Podobaylo, Opanas Predrymyrskyi and Klanivskyi with the Lithuanian army leadership on 14 June 1651 in Horval. Having unquestionable confirmation in the written records of the time, the drawing visualises them, gives an idea of the appearance and clothing of the representatives of the Cossack officers of the Zaporozhian Army, Janusz Radziwil and his immediate entourage, led by the army (including German mercenaries) as of June 1651. It also depicts details of the interior of the room of Jan Mezhynskyi's Volkovyn subdean and the oldest surviving detailed depiction of the construction of the walls and ceiling of a room in the Naddniprianshchyna. According to the authors, the copy of the drawing in the collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine is an original work by Westerfeld. At least, it fully corresponds to the Baroque style of European drawing and engraving of the middle – second half of the seventeenth century.