Painting of Mutsdi Tarinzgel Church

Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to determine place for the mural of a hall church located in village Mutsdi, Lentekhi District, Kvemo Svaneti within the line of progression of the Georgian monumental painting and to reveal its regional characteristics. Accordingly, the Mutsdi mural is examined under the following four components – artistic programme for murals, iconography of images, decorative system for murals and stylistic resolution of images. Taking into consideration that the date of Taringzeli mural of Mutsdi was not firmly determined under the scientific literature, each component has been compared to XI-XII- XIII centuries’ examples of Zemo and Kvemo Svaneti as well as to the examples found in valley, so that it could have been revealed characteristics of which century or region Mutsdi mural has.

Through the artistic programming, analysis and comparison of Taringzeli mural of Mutsdi, it was revealed that in general, none of the examples have its identical programme composition, however, it may be ascertained that by its details Taringzeli mural of Mutsdi reveals regional characteristics, although overall, the programme composition failed to point to a concrete date. Examination of each composition from the iconography perspective revealed a heterogeneous pattern, iconographical editions of Mutsdi have found common ground both with XI-XII-XIII centuries’ examples of Zemo and Kvemo Svaneti, as well as with XI-XII centuries’ editions from valley.

An interesting result was observed when comparing editions of epiphany and hell captivity, they were not able to find a common ground with any of the examples. When examining the artistic system of Mutsdi and again by comparing it with other examples, it was revealed that Taringzeli mural of Mutsdi stands closer to XI-XII centuries’ examples characterised as monumental-architectonic than to the dynamic-decorative mural systems of XIII century. After conducting a stylistic analysis of Mutsdi mural, it was revealed that Mutsdi has more connection with the examples of XII century Zemo Svaneti and valley. In conclusion, examination of each components of Mutsdi mural revealed that overall it is rather hard to assign the latter to any century or region.

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