The Library held Portrait of the First Printer class on February 12. Each of the participants could paint their own portrait of Francysk Skaryna. The output is impressive.
The well-known portrait of Francysk Skaryna was twice placed in his books. This is one of the earliest portraits of printers in the history of the book, if not the first. The first oil painting of our first printer was made by Jazep Drazdowicz. The artist made a number of paintings and watercolors of Francysk Skaryna in 1927 and the first half of the 1940s. Other famous Belarusian artists including Ivan Akhremchik, Gavriil Vashchenko, Nikolai Bayrachny, Victor Shmatov, Valentin and Laila Varets, Pavel Tatarnikov and others also made their portraits of Skaryna.
The kids studied the portraits created by famous artists and then began to create their own ones. Some approached the task creatively and made photo stand-ins – bright photo stands with a hole for a face. Hence, each participant could become a Belarusian first printer for a short time.
The class was a success due to enthusiastic 4 "A" students of Secondary School No. 69 of the city of Minsk and their teacher, Ms Marina Yatskevich.
The classes are held as part of the project On a Visit to Books.
Bibliology Research Department
