Akhiza, Murals of the Cathedral

Building:	Akhiza, Cathedral
Layer of the Murals:	One Layer
Date/Period:	5th-6th cc.
Donor(s):	Unknown
Painter(s):	Unknown

Inscription(s)

of the Donor(s)

of the Painter(s)

Description

According to archive materials, there existed a mosaic image of Virgin Mary Oranta in the chancel of the cathedral of Akhiza. Furthermore, it remains unknown whether the image was represented in the conch or was part of the composition of Deesis-Theophany. Traces of the smalt remaining from the mosaic, as well as three antefixes, were brought from Akhiza to Tbilisi in the early 1900s; presently the mosaic stones are preserved in Simon Janashia Museum of the Georgian National Museum (inventory N A-1440).

Bibliography

Shalva Amiranashvili, “K’art’uli kedlis mkhatvrobis dasurat’ebuli dednis fragmentebi” [Fragments of the Book of Models of Georgian Wall Painting”], in Arili, prof’esor ivane javakhishvilisadmi misi sametsniero moghvats’eobis 25 ts’lis t’avze (1900–1925) midzghvinili krebuli [Arili: Festschrift to Ivane Javakhishvili on the Occasion of Twenty-Five Years of his Academic Carreer (1900–1925)] (Tbilisi, 1925), 33.

Zaza Skhirtladze, “Akhizis eklesiisa da misi mozaikis gamo” [“Concerning of the Akhiza Church and its Mosaic”], Literatura da khelovneba [Literature and Art] 3 (1991): 154–60.

Wachtang Djobadze, adreuli shua saukuneebis monastrebi istoriul taoshi, klarjet’sa da shavshet’shi [Early medieval Georgian monasteries in historic Tao, Klarjet’i, and Šavšet’i] (Tbilisi, 2007), 38.

Zaza Skhirtladze, “The Apse Decoration of the Akhiza Cathedral: Documents and Materials in the Museum of Georgia”, Anatolian Studies 59 (2009): 139–40.