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The purpose of the article is to introduce into scientific circulation new information regarding the attribution of portraits of unknown persons from the collection of the Chernivtsi Art Museum and to examine the process of studying these works. The methodology of this study involves the use of various methods: historical, systematic, verification of the received data, artistic, and comparative analysis, among others. The application of these scientific methods allowed to comprehensively and objectively study and systematise the information available in various sources regarding the studied paintings and discover the names of the portrait subjects. The scientific novelty of the research results consists in the fact that for the first time the stylistic features of the works were analysed, the similarity of museum paintings with portraits made by other European artists of the 18th century was revealed; the faces of the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire depicted by artists, the time of execution and the provenance of the portraits were determined. Conclusions. The study of pictorial portraits that entered the collection of the Chernivtsi Art Museum, such as "Portrait of a Woman" and "Portrait of a Man" by unknown authors, began with an analysis of stylistics, which made it possible to roughly establish the time of the creation of images as the second half of the 18th century, when in the fine arts of Europe the rococo style prevailed and in some places overlapped with older traditions of creating ceremonial portraits, which were characterised by emphasised restraint and some conventionality and flatness in the interpretation of form. Further restoration and research of the works, in particular the features of the costume, attributes and awards in the portrait of a young man, allowed to assume that the portrait depicts members of one of the royal families of Europe. Comparative analysis revealed that the paintings from the museum's collection are ceremonial portraits of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary (1717–1780) and her son Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790). The found analogies with similar works of European masters also helped to establish that the works of the court artists of these monarchs, in particular, Joseph Hickel and Anton von Maron, as well as the works of other artists, served as models for the portraits from the museum in Chernivtsi. The study of the biographies of the portrait subjects and the time of execution of the works, which became samples, also confirmed the preliminary dating of the works ‒ 1770s.

The purpose of this article is to consider the peculiarities of the reflection of the city – its architecture and inhabitants – in the works of Chernivtsi artists of the 20th and early 21st century, to analyze the differences between their views on the reproduction of urban motifs. The methodology consists in the application of the historical-chronological method, art analysis, and generalization, comparative and systematic approach. The scientific novelty lies in the introduction into scientific circulation of works by artists of the specified time, in understanding the evolution in the reflection of the city in the works of authors with various artistic orientations. Conclusions. In the paintings and graphics of the 20th – 21st centuries, several options for solving urban landscapes can be defined, among which the most common is a careful reflection of existing architectural monuments. In the 19th century in European art, in particular in Impressionist painting, the desire to convey not only the appearance but above all the spirit of the city became noticeable, depicting the townspeople, emphasizing the bustle or poetry of squares and streets. At the turn of the 20th-21st centuries the artists are no longer limited to the usual fixation of what is seen, but try to create a conceptual image of the city, to tell a story through iconic images and symbols, reveal their own position in particular and to preserve the authenticity of an object or the city in general. Such a variety of approaches for creating an urban landscape is partly due to differences in preferences formed during studies in art institutions and is also characteristic for the art of Chernivtsi – a city where people of many nationalities with different cultural traditions have lived side by side for centuries. Ultimately, the artists who worked here in the 20th century were often graduates not only of Ukrainian schools or universities, but also of well-known European institutions, including Vienna, Munich, Florentine, Berlin, Kraków, or Bucharest academies. While in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century the city often appears as the sum of certain architectural structures in the works of artists of Bukovina and visiting masters (F. Emery, R. Bernt, J. Shubirs), in the second half of the 19th – first third of the 20th century the artists mostly try to recreate the dynamics of urban life instead, sometimes depicted with a touch of irony, using the grotesque in the image of the inhabitants (lithography and watercolors by F.-K. Knapp, O. Laske and G. Löwendal). Subsequently, we meet emphasized mood images, in which the author's subjective perception of a particular motive, which he seeks to reproduce in a work full of emotions, is important (L. Kopelman, G. Gorbaty). A peculiar historical retrospection is present in the exquisite graphics of O. Kryvoruchko and in the distilled-finished sheets of O. Lyubkivsky, and the lyrical watercolors and sketches of N. Yarmolchuk represent the non-festive side of the city center. In O. Litvinov's paintings Chernivtsi surprises with desolation and restraint, and in M. Rybachuk's paintings it is distinguished by an unexpected riot of colors. Therefore, each of the artists creates his own image of Chernivtsi, which landscapes often become only a stimulus for the author's imagination, allowing him to depict a completely individual sense of space and life of the city.