“Zaporozhian Cossacks" is one of the most famous paintings by the Ukrainian painter Illya Ripyn, who is currently known as Ilya Repin (the russian version of his name) due to the long history of appropriation of Ukrainian culture by Russia. The painter is of Cossacks ancestry and his surname comes from a Cossack nicknamed Ripa. Ripyn means a descendant of Ripa. Illya Ripyn instead of Ilya Repin is not a new but a reappropriated form of the correct spelling of the painter's surname.
Ripyn was inspired to create "Zaporozhian Cossacks" by a historian finding at the end of the 19th century of a copy of a letter written, allegedly, in 1676 by Ivan Sirko together with other Cossacs, that contained a ridiculing reply to an ultimatum from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to surrender. Nowadays the painting is widely called "Zaporozhian Cossacks are Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan" although the painter himself called it just "Zaporozhian Cossacks". There are different interpretations of the painter's implied addressee of the Cossacks’ reply.
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