Georgi Danchov

The most trusted likeness of Vasil Levski, the revolutionary Bulgarians call the Apostle of Freedom, was painted by a man who actually knew him: Georgi Danchov, nicknamed Zografina, the little painter. In 1869 Levski stayed in Danchov's house in the town of Chirpan while building the secret revolutionary network, and Danchov became one of his close associates.

Danchov had learned lithography in Constantinople and worked as a painter, an icon-maker for churches around Plovdiv and Stara Zagora, and one of Bulgaria's early photographers. His politics nearly cost him his life. For his part in the independence movement he was sentenced to exile in Diyarbakir, in the far southeast of the Ottoman Empire, and escaped to Russia in 1876.

After Bulgaria was freed he settled in Plovdiv, and in 1879 produced his best-known print, an allegory titled Free Bulgaria. He kept painting and taking photographs until his death in Sofia in 1908.