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History
Historian Ivan Kamanin divided the history of the development of the Ukrainian font into three periods.
The first period (the end of the 15th — the beginning of the 16th century). For this period, the term "statutory cursive", which was proposed by Izmail Sreznevsky, was adopted. At that time, Ukrainian writing was free from any foreign influence and in the ways of writing it followed the traditions of Byzantium, retaining the character of constitutional cursive for a long time (in contrast to the Russian cursive of that time, which was early exposed to external influences, possibly Eastern, as a result of which inequality later developed and hookiness).
The second period (the second half of the 16th century) is characterized by a tendency to fused writing of words: a significant inclination of letters, bending of the ends of letters to the right, the end of one letter closer to the beginning of the next. But the real connection was still being made. It became more common to move individual letters up, above the line.
Small letters are all almost the same height (whereas in Russian cursive letters varied in width and span at different heights). The process of the appearance of new forms of letters was activated. At the end of the second period, the influence of Western European calligraphy, which came to Ukraine through Poland, increased.
A distinctive feature of the third period (the end of the 16th - the middle of the 18th century) was the appearance of a new character in writing that developed in Ukrainian schools founded by Orthodox brotherhoods. Ostrozka, Volodymyrska, Kyivska, and Lutska schools were opened. Painting became one of the main subjects of teaching. New handwritings were formed - Kyiv, Ostroh, Chigyrin (Cossack). It was the time of the highest flowering of Ukrainian cursive writing, which organically fit into the space of baroque culture.
Characteristic
This is how Vitaly Mitchenko characterizes Ukrainian cursive writing in the work "The Art of Cursive Writing in the Space of the Ukrainian Baroque":
Let's take any station wagon of one of the Ukrainian offices and see how the scribe disposes of the "spatial layer" of the sheet. Compositionally and spatially, this sheet can be compared to the facade of a baroque tenement house when "reading" it from top to bottom. First there are temperamental twists and strokes, which give a visual accent to the beginning of the inscription and a vertical connection to the first lines. They form a semblance of a baroque cartouche with dynamics and asymmetry in details characteristic of Ukrainian architecture of this period. Then the zealous, exquisitely virtuosic and well-calibrated work begins: writing words and assembling horizontal lines into a vertical mass of the inscription, where the function of a binder is performed by vertical ties of ligatures. And at the end of the inscription there is a dash, which is a means of psychological relief after hard work. Such a complex spatial and linear rhythm is characteristic of Ukrainian cursive. European calligraphy of this time is rhythmically more measured. The spatial layer of the sheet, in which the mass of the inscription is located, is shallow. The line is rational and elastic, like a compressed spring. In the Russian cursive script of this period, the role of psychological separations, along with dashes, was performed by outlying elements of letters, due to which the inscription was more uneven, pulsating.
This is how Vitaly Mitchenko characterizes Ukrainian cursive writing in the work "The Art of Cursive Writing in the Space of the Ukrainian Baroque":
Let's take any station wagon of one of the Ukrainian offices and see how the scribe disposes of the "spatial layer" of the sheet. Compositionally and spatially, this sheet can be compared to the facade of a baroque tenement house when "reading" it from top to bottom. First there are temperamental twists and strokes, which give a visual accent to the beginning of the inscription and a vertical connection to the first lines. They form a semblance of a baroque cartouche with dynamics and asymmetry in details characteristic of Ukrainian architecture of this period. Then the zealous, exquisitely virtuosic and well-calibrated work begins: writing words and assembling horizontal lines into a vertical mass of the inscription, where the function of a binder is performed by vertical ties of ligatures. And at the end of the inscription there is a dash, which is a means of psychological relief after hard work. Such a complex spatial and linear rhythm is characteristic of Ukrainian cursive. European calligraphy of this time is rhythmically more measured. The spatial layer of the sheet, in which the mass of the inscription is located, is shallow. The line is rational and elastic, like a compressed spring. In the Russian cursive script of this period, the role of psychological separations, along with dashes, was performed by outlying elements of letters, due to which the inscription was more uneven, pulsating.