Today I wanted to take a brief stop at the Gelati Monastery, an early twelfth century structure which is located in a country that we've never had an occasion to feature before, Georgia -- specifically, Kutaisi, Georgia. This particular monastery complex was built under the influence of the Byzantine Empire (or Eastern Roman Empire if you prefer). It is precisely this Byzantine/Eastern Roman aspect that draws me here, because to my mind what I find of interest is to seek out points of architectural and artistic similarity with examples we can find in the West.
Now at first glance, one might be tempted to see this as little more than a typical Orthodox church (not a bad thing of course), thereby distinct from the Western Latin tradition. It is certainly true that the church's plan follows a typical cross-in-square type of pattern, seeing a dome in the centre, the four branches of the Greek cross extending outward from this central point in an equidistant manner. This plan was particularly dominant in the mid to late Byzantine period and is as iconic in the East as the Latin cruciform plan would be in the West.
Today a modern, iconostasis structure has been added to the church (somewhat distractingly so, so I won't show it), but if we strip that away and look at the church without that modern structure in place, here is what we would see:
In summary, we see a synthronon surrounding the altar (where the various clergy would sit) the 'cathedra' located centrally behind the altar (which comes in the table form common in the Byzantine East). Interestingly the altar is not canopied, but one suspects it originally would have been. Similarly, we also see no balustrade here in this photo, but you can see the foundations where an ancient one, likely made of stone, had once stood. As we have noted before in other articles on this subject, typically these balustrades, found in both East and West, were transformed in the East in later centuries into what we now know as the iconostasis ,which is essentially just a balustrade whose open spaces have been filled in with icons. In the case of the Gelati church, it doesn't take much imagination to start to see the commonalities between this church and the Italo-Byzantine churches of the West. A particularly apt comparison here would be the the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, near Venice.
Also worthwhile of attention is the exquisite twelfth century apse mosaic depicting the Virgin and Child with two archangels, Michael and Gabriel, vested in Byzantine styled imperial dress found to either side.
This particular mosaic is considered one of the great treasures of Christian Georgia so it is worth a closer look:
Here again, this is all very familiar. We can see these types of aspidal depictions throughout Rome, Italy, and other parts of the later Roman empire, partially as a result of the 'diaspora' of Byzantine artists and mosaicists fleeing the scourge of iconoclasm.
The balustrade itself is quite beautiful and appears to be constructed of stone that has then been painted and decorated by polychromatic ornament. Obviously too, icon panels have later been inserted and "royal doors" added.
With the icon panels removed, one will more readily see how we are essentially left with the a classic balustrade as one might as well find in medieval Latin churches as well:
I do not think it a stretch to say that this form represents the true, ancient Byzantine and Eastern Roman face of this church, stripped of the accretions of later centuries.
In terms of ciborium like structures, we are fortunately not entirely left to our imaginations here either as we can find at least one such structure still standing:
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