Icons of Archangels from the Church of Sts. Cyricus and Julitta (Lagourka) and the Museum of History and Ethnography of Svaneti in Mestia
Stylistic Features and their Place in the Art of the Byzantine Oikumene
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18688/Keywords:
Georgian icon-painting, images of archangels, Byzantine art c. 1100, wall painting of Ateni Sioni, manuscript illumination of the late 11th – early 12th centuryAbstract
This article is part of the research project “The art of artistic centers of the Byzantine world from the 11th to the 14th century” at the State Institute for Art Studies.
The article is dedicated to two icons of archangels (which evidently originate from one and the same iconostasis) preserved in Upper Svaneti, distinguished for a very high artistic quality and mild and delicate expression of images. They were most probably painted in the first decades of the 12th century in one of significant Georgian artistic centres by a local master trained in Byzantium who was inspired by the most sophisticated and magnificent Byzantine works of art of the late 11th – early 12th century. The author of the article attempts to demonstrate which pieces of art may have influenced the style and imagery of the Georgian icon-painter and adduces stylistic analogies for the icons among the works of Byzantinizing Georgian art as well as proper Byzantine art. The frescoes in the east apse and squinches of the Ateni Sioni church and the narthex of Gelati monastery, the images of the 40 martyrs of Sebaste in the icon from the Church of St.George in Ipkhi currently kept in the collection of the Museum of History and Ethnography of Svaneti in Mestia, as well as the Bachkovo ossuary frescoes, reveal closest stylistic resemblance with the icons of archangels.
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