Аннотация:Unfortunately, the wall-paintings in the mediaeval churches of Tao-Klarjeti have been lost completely or to a significant extent. Those in the church of St John the Baptist in Parkhali, completed before 973, so far have been known only from some brief mentions by the 19th c. travelers. The walls of this church have been white-washed for many decades, and it is not known, whether the wall-paintings still survive. As soon as the church is now under restoration, we considered it timely to present some new archival materials on its wall-paintings.
One of the most important works on the monumental painting of Tao-Klarjeti is the book of Ekvtime Takaishvili first published only in 1952, basing on the materials of his 1917 expedition. This book contains detailed descriptions of architecture, epigraphic evidence and paintings of Ishkhani, Oshki and Khakhuli. However, Otkhta Eklesia and Parkhali were examined by other members of the expedition after Takaishvili’s departure. Therefore these descriptions are less complete and the information on Parkhali wall-paintings is very scanty.
In the same time, in summer of 1917, these churches were examined by another expedition headed by Nikolai Okunev (1885-1949), who was just appointed professor of Petrograd University. This expedition was part of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ activities aimed at research and preservation of Christian monuments in the East during the First World War. Upon his return to Petrograd, Okunev published a brief account of his expedition. Yet most of his materials, including his notes and more than 400 photographs, remained unpublished.
We shall discuss the photographs of Parkhali wall-paintings made during Okunev’s expedition and now kept in the archive of the Institute of History of Material Culture in St Petersburg. The wall-paintings were preserved in the niches of the eastern piers and in the altar apse. They were partially damaged or stained with paint. Yet these photographs help to reconstruct Parkhali iconographic program on the whole. It is possible to discern the lower parts of the image of Christ in Majesty in the conch of the apse, two tiers of standing figures of the apostles and the Church fathers and three lower tiers. Two of them had Gospel scenes. We identified some of them: Annunciation, Meeting of the Virgin with St Elizabeth, Nativity, Baptism, Transfiguration. There was probably the Passion cycle in the next tier. The images of the lower tier so far remain unidentified. In the altar window there was a half-figure in a medallion similar to the image of the Holy Sion in Otkhta Eklesia. There are also some fragments of compositions on either side of this image.
It has been suggested already that not only the architecture but also the wall-paintings in Parkhali and Otkhta are similar to each other. Now we have a possibility to make more detailed comparisons between these two ensembles and to discuss them in a wider historical and artistic context.