Calendar
Information
Institute
People
Research projects
Publications
Library
Photo library
Patrons
Applications
Directorates
Library
Photo library
Young Researchers
Max Planck Fellow
Max Planck Research Groups
Minerva Program
Research cooperations
Research of employees
     
                 
Go to Homepage
 
Medieval Georgia in a Cross-Cultural Perspective

 A collaboration between the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut, the Georgian Ministry of Culture, Monuments Protection and Sport, the George Chubinashvili National Research Centre for Georgian Art History and Heritage Preservation (Tbilisi), and the University of Basel.

Georgia is located at the cross-roads between Asia and Europe. Its Christianization began in Late Antiquity, and it preserves a rich cultural heritage of medieval churches and their decoration. With its royal representation and patronage it forms a centre which, over the course of several centuries, participated in the artistic exchange between the Black sea and the Caucasus area (with influences from Iran and the West). Georgia is often seen as provincial from the point of view of Constantinople and it thus holds a position similar to that of medieval Italy.

The meeting of international and Georgian art historians in front of monuments suggested by this project created a discussion on the fundamental issues of the geographies of art in the Mediterranean and Middle East. It includes visits to sites undergoing restoration and the study of the politics of conservation 'in situ'. In fact the collaboration, which began with a joint seminar of Georgian, German, Italian and Israeli scholars, held in October 2006 in Tbilisi, was followed by a research trip to major sites of artistic and cultural heritage within the country - by means of a generous invitation from the Georgian Ministry of Culture.

During this trip and a subsequent expedition in 2007, vast photographic documentation was made by the Israeli artist and photographer Dror Maayan. The photographs, which have been included in the digital photo archives of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, offer an incomparable resource for scholarly research all over the world.

Two photographic exhibitions have been organised: one held in Tbilisi in 2007 and an online show in Florence in 2008. The next step was an autumn seminar in Georgia in September 2009 that discussed new approaches to medieval art history in the East and West, in which young visiting scholars and students from Georgia participated.

  

Project collaborators
Gerhard Wolf

Further information
Online Exhibition "Georgia. Medieval Monuments"

Conference "Figure and Ornament: Aesthetics, Art and Architecture in the Caucasus region, from 400 to 1650" (Tbilisi, 29 September - 1 October 2011)
< back
Print this page 		 
Go to MPG Homepage