Discontinuities and Persistence

We cordially invite you to the lecture from the cycle Collegium historiae artium, which will be given by Ondřej Haničák (Institute of Art History CAS / Silesian Museum) and Svitlana Potapenko (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine / Goethe University Frankfurt) on the topic of Discontinuities and Persistence: Visual Representations of the Razumovsky Family through Its Private Art Collection.

Across more than two centuries, portraits and other collected objects helped the Razumovskys, a noble family of Ukrainian Cossack origin, articulate, preserve, and repeatedly reinterpret their identity amid profound political, social, and geographical change. Selected eighteenth-century painted and engraved portraits of Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky reveal how his position between the Ukrainian Hetmanate and the Russian imperial court was negotiated in visual terms. The focus then shifts to Count Camillo Razumovsky's collecting activities in Austrian Silesia, viewed as part of a broader programme of aristocratic self-representation, the cultivation of family memory, and the family's social positioning. Finally, the collection's dispersal as a result of war, forced migration, confiscation, and institutional transfer is considered alongside recent efforts to reconstruct its historical contexts and internal connections through provenance research combining evidence from the family's private archive in Austria with surviving objects held in public collections in the Czech Republic.

The lecture will take place on Wednesday, October 14, 2026 at 4.30 pm in the Institute of Art History CAS, room 117, Husova 4, Prague 1.