A “Cossack Rider”?
As late as 2007, Andrew Gregorovich, a Ukrainian researcher in Canada specializing in printed images and antique maps, somewhat more firmly rejected the identification with Marcjan Oginski and again proposed restoring the original name, Cossack Rider.
He returned to the older theory that the eighteenth-century Lithuanian Grand Hetman Michal Kazimierz Oginski had purchased the painting and not inherited it. He also challenged Held's rejection of a Ukrainian Cossack subject because seventeenthcentury Cossacks wore loose-fitting sharavary and not tight breeches. He printed several seventeenth-century pictures and drawings of Cossacks wearing such breeches and noted the similarity of the rider's kuchma and zhupan to those of the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (d. 1657) and his followers. Indeed, the words kuchma and zhupan remained current in Ukrainian until recent times, the former becoming a common surname.37Gregorovich also pointed out that the rider's plain clothing and unimpressive horse were more likely to belong to a simple Cossack than to a great Polish magnate, and that Rembrandt probably knew something of the Ukrainian Cossacks because they threw off Polish rule about the time he created his canvas, and the Dutch and French press reported the uprising. Indeed, Gregorovich continued, even the cartouches of various maps of that time displayed Cossack figures that Rembrandt might have seen.
Gregorovich did not address Zygulskis argument about the complete authenticity of the rider's outfit (which required a sitter), but Bryk-De- viatnytsky, as noted above, had identified some Ukrainian students at Frankener. Moreover, there were then still many Ukrainian Cossacks enrolled as light cavalrymen in Polish armies, and even Ivan Mazepa was in Holland at exactly this time. However, no closer Ukrainian connections with Rembrandt and his painting have been established. Thus, while Gre- gorovich's hypothesis about a “Cossack Rider” may not convince everyone, it does reveal the extent to which some modern Ukrainians identify with Rembrandt's rider.38