ИСТИНА

The paper analyzes the archival materials on the wall-paintings of Ishkhani cathedral kept in the Archive of the Institute for the History of Material Culture in St Petersburg, Russia. In summer of 1917 the Ishkhani cathedral was examined by the expedition of academician Ekvtime Takaishvili. He published the description of the cathedral’s iconographic program and some photographs in 1952. Later Nicole and Michel Thierry reexamined the remaining wall-paintings and made some important additions and remarks in their article of 1975. Other photographs made by the expedition of Nikolai Okunev, also in summer of 1917, give us important clues for reconstructing some more details of the cathedral’s iconographic program, now surviving in a very fragmentary condition. In particular, some more figures of apostles and hierarchs may be recognized in the middle and lower zones of the altar apse. In the bema an image of St Nino may be identified in one of medallions. In the Northern arm of the transept some more compositions may be seen besides those described by Takaishvili and Thierry: the Dream of Joseph, the Flight into Egypt, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Betrayal of Judas and the Prayer at Gethsimane. In the Southern arm of the transept there were probably the Dormition of the Virgin and the Ascension. Contrary to the opinion of Takaishvili and Thierry, we suggest that the majority of the wall-paintings in the altar and the transept were contemporary with the wall-paintings in the dome made around 1032.