Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks

Ilya Repin’s Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks depicts a legendary episode of 1676, when the Zaporozhian Cossacks, encamped on the Dnieper, wrote a mocking reply to the Ottoman sultan’s demand for submission. Repin worked on the painting for more than a decade, filling it with a gallery of brilliantly characterized faces, each caught in a different burst of laughter. It is at once a history painting, a study of national character, and one of the most joyfully human images in Russian art.