Original wall paintings at the church of the Saviour in Chvabiani (Upper Svaneti, Georgia) and Byzantine art at the turn of the tenth to eleventh centuries

Abstract

The article deals with a little known ensemble of wall paintings at the Church of the Saviour in Chvabiani, Upper Svaneti, Georgia. The initial decoration of the church dated to 978- 1001 has survived mainly in the apse. The badly preserved Theophany in the conch attracted the attention of scholars who analyzed its iconography. The Apostles in the lower zone, however, were considered to be repainted at a later date. Our examination of these wall paintings revealed no traces of later additions. Through the analysis of technique and style we aim to prove that the both compositions belong to the turn of the tenth to eleventh century. These wall paintings show unusually high quality and close affinities with Byzantine art of this period. In our view, they could be a work of a visiting artist, probably a Georgian trained at some major Byzantine artistic center. He may well have been among the artists working on wall paintings at the cathedrals built and decorated by order of kings and church hierarchs during the late tenth to early eleventh centuries, in Tao-Klarjeti or other lands of the Georgian kingdom still under formation.