Rene Oskarovna Schmerling ( ka, რენე შმერლინგი; December 5, 1901 — February 18, 1967) was a Georgian

art historian Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...

and

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

famous for her work on medieval and Byzantine Georgian art.

Biography

Born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1901, Schmerling was the daughter of

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

and

graphic artist A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, p ...

. She graduated from

Tbilisi State Academy of Arts The Tbilisi State Academy of Arts ( ka, თბილისის სახელმწიფო სამხატვრო აკადემია) is one of the oldest universities in Georgia and Caucasus. It is located in central Tbilisi near ...

in 1929. Schmerling worked at the State Museum of Georgia. In 1941, she was one of the founders of the Institute of History of Georgian Art (today the

Giorgi Chubinashvili Giorgi Chubinashvili ( ka, გიორგი ჩუბინაშვილი; November 21, 1885 – January 14, 1973) was a Georgian art historian. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia he studied psychology at the universities of Leipzig and Hall ...

National Centre for the Study of Georgian Art History and Monument Protection) at the Georgian National Academy of Sciences. She was a senior researcher there until her death in 1967. Her work concerned Georgian

paleography Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...

, architecture,

ironworking Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. The earliest surviving prehistoric iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from o ...

illuminated manuscript An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, the ...

s, and other medieval and Byzantine arts. She led expeditions to Svaneti and

Dagestan Dagestan ( ; rus, Дагеста́н, , dəɡʲɪˈstan, links=yes), officially the Republic of Dagestan (russian: Респу́блика Дагеста́н, Respúblika Dagestán, links=no), is a republic of Russia situated in the North C ...

to study the

early Christian architecture Early Christian art and architecture or Paleochristian art is the art produced by Christians or under Christian patronage from the earliest period of Christianity to, depending on the definition used, sometime between 260 and 525. In practice, id ...

of these regions in the 1950s. She trained many future scholars of Georgian art. She was also an art critic. At one of the first artistic exhibitions in Tbilisi after the loosening of censorship with the death of Stalin in 1953, she said, "I am glad that browns have left these walls and that true colors shine on them now." Her collection of

bookplate An ''Ex Libris'' (from ''ex-librīs'', ), also known as a bookplate (or book-plate, as it was commonly styled until the early 20th century), is a printed or decorative label pasted into a book, often on the front endpaper, to indicate ownership. ...

s (ex libris), which includes works by famous Georgian artists and Nikoloz Chernishkov ( ru), was the subject of an exhibition in 2014.

Selected publications

* ''Samples of Decorative Decoration of Georgian Manuscripts (Obrazcy dekorativnogo ubranstva gruzinskich rukopisej: al'bom iz 32 tabljc),''Tbilisi: Gruzinskaja filial Akademii nauk SSSR, 1940. * ''Georgian Architectural Ornaments (Gruzinskij architekturyj ornament)'', Tbilisi: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1954. * ''Outskirts of Tbilisi: an Architectural Guide (Okrestnosti Tbilisi : architekturnyi putevoditel'),'' Tbilisi: Izd. Akad. Nauk. Gruzinskoj SSR, 1960. * ''Forms in the Architecture of Medieval Georgia (Малые формы в архитектуре средневековой Грузии., Malye formy v arkhitekture srednevekovoĭ Gruzii)'', Tbilisi: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk Gruzinskoĭ SSR, 1962. * ''Illuminations of Books and Manuscripts (Chudožestvennoe oformlenie gruzinskoj rukopisnoj knigi IX - XI vv)'' Tbilisi: Met︠s︡niereba, 1967-1979. * ''Sepulchral Tombs in Dagestan (Rez'ba po kamnju v Dagestane),'' 1966. * ''Metechi Temple in Tbilisi (Chram Metechi v Tbilisi),'' Tbilisi: Izd. Mezniereba, 1969.(published posthumously). * ''Ot Tbilisi do Kavkavi'', Mecʻniereba, 1991 (published posthumously).

References

{{Authority control 1901 births 1967 deaths Medievalists from Georgia (country) Byzantinists from Georgia (country) Tbilisi State Academy of Arts alumni 20th-century historians from Georgia (country) Women art historians Soviet women historians Soviet art historians