A famous English scholar of Byzantine and Georgian studies Anthony Bryer died in 2016, October 22. The obituary released by the journal The Guardian is being printed in the current edition of The Kartvelologist. The material was provided by Anthony Bryer’s English colleagues. 

If Britain today provides a flourishing base from which to study Byzantium, the eastern Roman Christian empire that flowered between 330 and 1453, Anthony Bryer, who has died aged 78, is the individual responsible. He was an inspiring teacher and the pioneer in promoting the growth in interest in medieval Greek and Turkish culture in the 1960s, when “Byzantine” was more often used as a term of abuse.

Rustaveli’s characters tend to be various: women, men, kings and queens, masters, vassals, knights, mer-chants, warriors, pirates, viziers and servants. The ideal knights being of the most significant amongst them. They are ideal not only from the “excellence” point of view but also as in terms of being created by the author through the fantasy. These aren’t real-empirical heroes extracted from the reality but rather the characters produced//created through the fantasy of the author, based on conventionality and exaggeration, elevating and rethinking of a human nature, created through the author’s imagination in particular. The best friendly couple, created through the similar artistic style is that of Avtandil and Tariel.

When studying the artistic images of Rustaveli characters, various issues arise, the revelation//formation of the nature of the characters being the most significant amongst them. There rises a question: How is the ideal artistic image of a knight seen by Rustaveli.

This question should be answered through the interpretation of the whole text of the poem. However, the theoretical assertion of different opinions by these two characters is very well provided in the following passage of the poem, being published in English translations along with the original version of the story.

The Editor

This article aims to analyze and compare the narrative forms of textual and visual works by Cristoforo De Castelli (1600-1659), the Sicilian missionary in Georgia, who left behind rich materials on the 17th century period of that country. The works of Castelli include letters, reports and drawings, created throughout his twenty-five-year stay in Georgia. Sent to Rome as independent compositions the works were collected and organized into seven thematically and chronologically ordered albums by Castelli upon his return to his hometown of Palermo (1656-1658), where the manuscripts are kept today. Other works (letters and reports) are scattered in different archives and libraries in Italy (Rome, Florence and Naples). Yet, as a single narrative it combines Castelli’s life throughout his mission in Georgia with his reflections on the realities of the country.

Taking the above-mentioned materials as a foundation for this writings, the article will focus on the set of drawings of Catholic residences in different regions of Georgia (the Kingdom of Kartli, the Principalities of Guria and Odishi), which could be considered the most telling examples of the changes in Castelli’s visual narrative forms from 1631 (when he first arrived in Georgia) to 1656 (his departure to Palermo). The article will try to reveal how each residence and its setting had captured the missionary’s attention and will follow Castelli’s textual and visual evolution through this process of documenting this dynamic relationship between Catholic missionaries and local peoples.

The present paper is an attempt to analyze some samples of Georgian medieval architecture, a small group of monuments which we believe to be outstanding for their facade decoration, i.e. churches built in the 10th-11th centuries, the facades of which are decorated with figurative relief compositions of the Savior’s Glorification, the Second Coming of Christ and Theophany.

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First of all, we must determine the significance of this group of monuments and the peculiarities to be concerned below. The 10th-11th centuries have been regarded as the era of the development of picturesque, baroque-like style. Not surprisingly, with regard to facade decoration, one of the principle artistic tendencies of this epoch evinced in the diminished role of figurative representation and the increased role of ornamental decoration: in that period, within the scope of development of the same picturesque style, more and more murals appear in church interiors. Since the 11th century entire walls were painted and the ideological burden shifts inside the churches. The facades are freed from thematic compositions and become extensively decorative.

The present paper refers to the most important epics of the High Middle Ages in Germany and Georgia: The Nibelungenlied (NL) and The Man in the Panther Skin (MPS). Both poems were composed around the year 1200 in very similar social envi-ronments (feudal system, court life, chivalry, Christianity), and both were unique secular poetries in those days.

A comparison of their characteristics seems therefore appropriate.

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In the NL, these two parts are often named Siegfried’s death and Kriemhild’s revenge. The first part recounts the wooing of Kriemhild by the hero Siegfried, their eventual marriage and his treacherous homicide. The second part tells of a second wooing of Kriemhild, this time by the widowed Hun king Etzel (Attila), their marriage and Kriemhild’s ultimate revenge on the Burgundians for Siegfried’s murder. The Klage (the lament), a poem written a couple of years after the NL, can be considered an accompanying commentary of the NL and describes the aftermath of the carnage at the Hun court.