Irakli Tezelashvili

Thesis (Provisional Title): Clerical Perspectives: Art, Patronage and Agency in Twelfth-century Georgia

Supervised by Professor Antony Eastmond, Advised by Dr Jessica Barker

Funded by the LEPL International Education Center and The Courtauld Postgraduate Scholarship

This thesis scrutinises twelfth-century Georgian art through the lens of clerical patrons. While looking at contents and materiality across media, ranging from monumental painting to portable pectorals and illuminated manuscripts, the project tackles how and why architecture and art were manipulated to benefit Georgian clergy at the time of the power struggle between the temporal and spiritual realms. Building on the themes of medieval artistic patronage, agency, and their current state, appropriation in centre and periphery discourses, materiality and its implications, performativity between ritual and visual, and interplay between verbal and visual, the study shifts traditional focus from royal and aristocratic patronage to the ecclesiastical field. More broadly, the project challenges the formalistic and nationalistic approaches that dominate Georgian art history and proposes nuanced frameworks based on novel interpretations of artistic patronage in a society dominated by political and cultural ambivalence towards Byzantium and Greek learning.

Education

2018–2020 MA Art History (‘Cultural Heritage and Modernity’), Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, The Institute of Art History and Theory (Distinction)

2014–2018 BA Art History (major), Byzantine Studies (minor), Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, The Institute of Art History and Theory (Distinction)

Teaching Experience

2024/25, Associate Lecturer, Semester 1, BA2/3 Histories ‘Art and Crusades’

Summer 2024, Teaching Assistant, Summer University, The Courtauld

2023/24, Teaching Assistant, Semester 1, BA1 Foundations, The Courtauld

Summer 2023, Teaching Assistant, Summer University, The Courtauld

Summer 2022, Teaching Assistant, Summer University, The Courtauld

Professional Activity

January 2022–, Postgraduate Associate to the Executive Committee, The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (SPBS)

December 2020–March 2021, Research Assistant, The University of California, Santa Barbara

May–July 2019, Research Assistant, The Johns Hopkins University

March 2019–September 2021, Research Assistant in The Centre for Georgian Art Studies, The Institute of Art History and Theory at The Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.

Publications

Books

Dimitri Gordeev, Studies in Medieval Georgian Art, Edited by Zaza Skhirtladze and Irakli Tezelashvili (Tbilisi: Tbilisi State University Press, Forthcoming).

Materials for the Study of the Murals of the Church of Saint Gregory in Ani. Notes by Nikolai Sichev 1911–1912, Edited by Zaza Skhirtladze, Irakli Tezelashvili, and Nikolai Smirnov (Tbilisi: Tbilisi State University Press, 2019).

Book Chapters

“The Khakhuli Triptych: A Royal Commission,“ in Zaza Skhirtladze (Ed.), The Khakhuli Triptych (Forthcoming).

“გელათის მონასტერში დაცული XII–XIII საუკუნეების ხელნაწერების შემკულობა“, კრებულში: ზაზა სხირტლაძე (რედ.), გელათი – დავით აღმაშენებლის მემკვიდრეობა (თბილისი: ივერიისა, 2024), 409–28 (Forthcoming).

“Dimitri Gordeev. Materials for Biography and Bibliography. Addenda Bibliographica,“ in Dimitri Gordeev, Studies in Medieval Georgian Art, Edited by Zaza Skhirtladze and Irakli Tezelashvili (Tbilisi: Tbilisi State University Press, Forthcoming), xvii–xxxviii, 500–30.

“Materials for the Study of Murals of Saint Gregory in Ani. Notes by Nikolai Sichev 1911–1912,” in Zaza Skhirtladze ed., Ed., Ani and Georgia, vol. 3 (Tbilisi: Tbilisi State University Press, 2020), 437–521 [co-authored with Zaza Skhirtladze].

“Materials about the Church of Saint Gregory in Ani from Dimitri Gordeev’s Expeditions,” in Zaza Skhirtladze Ed., Ani and Georgia, vol. 3 (Tbilisi: Tbilisi State University Press, 2020), 522–33 [co-authored with Zaza Skhirtladze].

Articles

“Materials for the Study of Ancha Icon of Saviour and Tsilkani Icon of the Virgin,” Proceedings of Gelati Academy of Sciences IV (2018): 211–53 (in Georgian) [co-authored with Zaza Skhirtladze]

Projects/Grants

The Courtauld Research Grants: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.

2021 May–November, Medieval Georgian Monumental Painting: A Database [Phase II] (Funded by the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University) (with Zaza Skhirtladze, Elizabeth Ugulava, Salome Meladze, Tamar Letodiani, Keti Gongadze, and Gia Shervashidze).

2020 November, Friends of Academic Research in Georgia (FaRiG) Caroline Adams Essay Prize for an essay “Intercession Through Dialogue: Depicting the Virgin Paraklesis in Medieval Georgia”.

2020 July–December, Medieval Georgian Monumental Painting: A Database [Phase I] (Funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia) (with Zaza Skhirtladze, Elizabeth Ugulava, Salome Meladze, Tamar Letodiani, Keti Gongadze, and Gia Shervashidze).

Conference Presentations and Public Talks (Recent)

9 July 2025, ‘“The Men of Honourable Life Adorned with All Virtues“: Theological Learning, Patronal Agency, and Artistic Production in 12th-Century Georgia’, International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds.

13 April 2025, ‘“Painted and adorned for the salvation of all of this valley: great and lesser“: Svan Churches of T’evdore, ‘the King’s Painter,’ Revisited’, 56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies: Byzantium from Below: Rural and Non-elite Life in the Byzantine World, University of Birmingham.

1 July 2024, ‘Dynastic Legitimacy: The Visual Responses to Royal Successions in High Medieval Georgia’, International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds.

7 October 2023, ‘Vested in Privilege: Polystaurion in Byzantium and Beyond,’ Constantinople and Mtskheta: Ecclesiastical and Cultural Interactions, Ecumenical Patriarchate: Halki Theological School, Organised by the Georgian Parish of Constantinople, İstanbul, Türkiye.

At The Courtauld:

16 May 2024, ‘The Royal Foundation? Art, Memory and Authority at Gelati Monastery’, Year 3 PhD Symposium, The Courtauld Institute of Art.

2 May 2023, ‘Art and Patronage in Twelfth-Century Georgia: The Icon of Christ from Gelati Monastery,’ The Courtauld Institute of Art, Year 2 Byzantine, Medieval and Renaissance PhD Symposium.

Summer Schools/Workshops

2024–25, East of Byzantium XI: Ritual, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University.

20 June–4 July 2022, Cappadocia in Context Summer Program (CAPP), Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), Cappadocia, Nevşehir, Türkiye.