THE ICONOGRAPHY OF PIROSMANASHVILI'S PAINTINGS AND ITS TIES WITH GEORGIAN ARTISTIC TRADITIONS

The work of the late 19th- to early 20th-century self-taught Georgian artist Niko Pirosmanashvili is among the jewels of Georgian cultural heritage. On one hand, Pirosmanashvili's legacy reflects his unique inborn talent, individual mastery and artistic individuality, while on the other his art is most often considered among the best expressions of the Georgian national aesthetic identity and its continuous artistic traditions. Furthermore, though being undoubtedly traditional, Pirosmanashvili's works and his means of expression are at the same time strikingly modern. All these qualities together determine the importance and special place of Pirosmani’s art in the history of Georgian culture.

The question of what precisely determines Pirosmani's affiliation with the Georgian visual language, and what can be identified as the immediate pictorial sources of his work, nonetheless remains in need of more systematic analysis. In this regard both the centuries-old traditions of medieval Georgian art (and the pre-Christian archetypes from which they partially derive), and the diverse phenomena of the contemporaneous visual culture warrant equal consideration.

A brief glance at Pirosmanashvili's pictures of various genres is enough to demonstrate that the artist returns time and again to the same themes, "canonical" subjects, schemes and attributes. His portraits, feast scenes, animals, rural life scenes, so-called "epics" (narrative folk-festival compositions), and still lifes all have their peculiar "iconographic scheme," compositional alignment and accompanying attributes — similarly to medieval Christian art, where every scene and image, owing to its sacred significance, conformed to a strictly defined canon of representation.

It is especially noteworthy that Pirosmanashvili's painting abounds in motifs which appear to derive from medieval "prototypes" — a large part of them being ancient, local archetypes going back to the pre-Christian era.

The linkage in terms of iconographic schemes is particularly evident in Pirosmanashvili's table compositions, which are frequently associated with medieval feast scenes: this is conveyed through the symmetrically disposed, undisturbed abundance of the spread table, the static postures of the figures, and the similarity of gestures (the raised vessel as a gesture of blessing).

Ateni Sioni Church, Tympanum Stone Carving, 5th century

Niko Pirosmani, Three Deer at the Spring, Georgian National Museum

A special place in Pirosmanashvili's work is occupied by animal imagery, whose anthropomorphic sensitivity has been repeatedly noted by scholars. It is especially noteworthy that the artist’s preference consistently falls upon animals that embody the most widespread Christian symbols. Among these the deer/stag occupies a prominent position. Medieval Georgian art is marked by a particular abundance of deer imagery, which can itself be considered a continuation of the pagan tradition widespread in pre-Christian metalwork. In the relief decoration of medieval churches and in mural painting, however, these images already acquire an explicitly Christian symbolism. Significantly, of the eighteen compositions Niko Pirosmanashvili dedicated to the theme of the deer, seven depict deer and does drinking at the water — an image that finds a direct parallel in the medieval scene of deer drinking at the stream (e.g., the illustration of Psalm 41.2 on the tympanum of the northern entrance of Ateni Sioni Church, 5th c.), which represents the symbolic image of a soul seeking to embrace Christianity.

Among Niko Pirosmanashvili's most beloved animals, judging by the number of works dedicated to it, is the lamb — an image clearly linked to the Christian symbolism of the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei) and its association with the Resurrection. In works such as "The Easter Lamb" and "The Lamb on the Graveyard," the lamb represents the sacrificial offering, thus bearing Christian symbolism.

The eagle, too, is a widespread image in medieval art, frequently found on church façades and capitals, often shown seizing a hare or other creature as a symbol of power and victory (e.g., the reliefs on the eastern façade of Ateni Sioni Church, 7th c.; the southern façades of the Oshki and Kakhuli churches, 10th c.; the column capital of Bagrati Cathedral, early 11th c.; and others). It is especially noteworthy that Pirosmanashvili's "The Eagle with the Seized Hare" directly follows this medieval iconographic scheme in its compositional structure.

Bagrati Cathedral, Column stone Carving, 11th century

Niko Pirosmani, The Eagle seizing the Hare, Georgian National Museum

Among the "medieval" features of Pirosmanashvili's art are the inscriptions accompanying the majority of his works. These inscriptions serve an explanatory function: as in a traditional medieval fresco or icon, they help unveil the idea of the painting while also playing an important role in the structure of the composition. Like the texts on medieval icons, the inscriptions in Pirosmanashvili's works help engage the beholder.

Pirosmanashvili's portraits are often compared to medieval icons. This effect is achieved through the direct eye contact established by the figures and through the artist's distinctive treatment of time and space. The depiction of eyes carries great significance in medieval Christian art, where the eye is considered the "mirror of the soul" — a kind of symbol of man's eternal existence. That is precisely why, in Christian murals and icons, the size of the eye is sometimes emphatically exaggerated, allowing for the establishment of direct contact with the prototype. It is through this very directed gaze, this eye contact, that Pirosmanashvili's portraits, too, draw closer to the beholder.

His portraits, like figures in medieval frescoes, are almost always presented frontally or in three-quarter turn, standing at full height ("Georgian Woman with Tambourine (Dayereh)," "Queen Tamar," "Karachokheli with a Horn of Wine," "The Nobleman with a Horn," "The Actress Margarita," "The Janitor," "The Fisherman," "The Cook"). Furthermore, the figures in Pirosmanashvili's individual and group portraits, like those in medieval icons, gaze outward from the picture plane toward the beholder — direct eye contact being one of the defining features of icon imagery.

Unlike the illusion of time usually created on the picture plane through movement and dynamic postures, Pirosmanashvili's figures are static, still, and solemn, as though existing beyond the dimensions of time and space. The grape-harvesters ("Sviri"), the captive prisoner and his escort ("Feast of St. George in Bolnisi"), even the dancers are presented motionless and solemn ("Wedding in Old-Time Georgia," "Church Festival in Kartli"). This creates a medieval, "timeless" character in the compositions.

The treatment of space in Pirosmanashvili's pictures is largely determined by his use of black oilcloth, which, as both a technical and artistic means of expression, plays an important role in creating his unreal, illusory imagery. The oilcloth is left bare and unpainted wherever the composition calls for black, since the bare black oilcloth itself serves as that black background. This cuts the depicted objects off from any real environment and pushes them instead toward the real space between the picture plane and the beholder. The effect can be compared to the neutral gold background used in Christian art — a means not of depicting a specific, real environment, but of creating the impression of an unreal, illusory world, while also establishing direct contact between the image and the spectator. In medieval icons and wall paintings, the image is not separated from the beholder by the "imaginary glass pane" of the picture plane, behind which an illusionistic scene begins; instead, it opens into the real space in front, where the beholder lives and moves. The same principle is especially evident in Pirosmanashvili's portraits, where the portrayed person or object, set against the black oilcloth, is depicted frontally, in the foreground of the picture, and is most often placed in close interaction with the beholder.

The blackness of the oilcloth also carries symbolic meaning for Pirosmanashvili, as attested by words he addressed to Lado Gudiashvili: "Life is a contrast, I understand this clearly — rich and poor, black and white. In life everything has two sides: good and evil. Here is a white cow, a symbol of peace, tranquility, and love. White is the color of love. The black bull fights and roars — it is war… When I paint the sad beauties of Ortachala, I place them against the background of a 'black life.' But they too have love for life — this is expressed through the flowers placed around them, the birds at their shoulders. I paint them wrapped in white sheets. I pity them, and with white I remit their sins…" Pirosmanashvili's use of the oilcloth's blackness as a symbol of "black life," and the whiteness of the sheet as a means of "remitting sins," recalls the color symbolism of medieval art, where every attribute and every color carries deep symbolic and meaning.

When discussing the sources of Pirosmani's "iconographic" repertoire, it is important to consider, alongside its medieval origins, various phenomena of contemporaneous visual culture — such as the easel portraits of his period, gravestone imagery, different branches of folk craftsmanship, the figurative imagery of Old Tbilisi silverware, and contemporaneous photographic portraits.

The portrait of Karachogeli on the 19th century gravestone at Kukia Cemetery, Tbilisi

In this regard, the figurative images found on 19th-century gravestones are of particular interest. Given the wide territorial spread of gravestone decoration across different social strata of rural and urban populations alike, it can be assumed that this tradition must also have exerted significant influence on Pirosmanashvili's work. Near Pirosmanashvili's house-museum in his native village of Mirzaani, gravestones featuring full-length portraits of the deceased in traditional garments are still scattered around the small hilltop church. The connection is further attested by the recollections of David Gozalishvili, a stonecarver from Signagi. He recalls that his father, Vano Gozalishvili, ran a gravestone-carving workshop in Signagi, where Niko Pirosmanashvili was a frequent visitor. According to D. Gozalishvili, the stonemasons would often ask the painter to sketch the outline of a chokha-clad man or a woman in traditional headgear (chikhtikopi) directly on the gravestone slab, after which the craftsmen would carve the figure accordingly (Soflis Tskhovreba, 19 January 1961). This little-known fact is especially significant, as it provides additional evidence for the connection between Pirosmanashvili's work and gravestone decoration. Particularly striking parallels are found at the old Kukia and Saints Peter and Paul Cemeteries in Tbilisi, where, alongside the village-typical chokha-clad and chikhtikopi-wearing figures, one also encounters people dressed in contemporary European styles. Preserved here, too, are gravestones depicting old Tbilisi types — the kinto and the karachokheli — rendered with their characteristic details. Juxtaposing the figurative images preserved at the old Tbilisi cemeteries with Pirosmanashvili's portraits reveals not only a shared period spirit, but a striking iconographic and stylistic resemblance. Brought together, they reflect the rich multicultural patchwork for which Old Tbilisi was famous.

Niko Pirosmani, Karachogeli with drinking horn, Georgian National Museum

The gravestone in itself doesn’t provide a space and for meticulous storytelling.  Hence, the language applied both in visual representation and in texts – or epitaphs – is extremely summary, highlighting only the key facts about the life and deeds of a deceased person. Namely, Pirosmanashvili’s portraits often referred to as “portrait-types, do not focus on the individual person as such; in contrast, they represent generalized, even “collective” images, incorporating only a few determining attributes, which capture the essential features and single out details that allude to the social class or profession of the portrayed person. In the same way that the image of scissors, a carding comb, or a sewing machine next to the portrait on the gravestone comments on the life of a craftswoman, the weapon on a fighter, the plough of a farmer, so too the singled-out attributes (a spoon tells us the story of a cook, as does a fish in hand for a fisherman) determine the profession/class of the people in Pirosmanashvili’s portraits.

Apart from the shared iconographic schemes between Pirosmanashvili’s portraits and gravestone figurative images, there are number of motives and sign-symbols, which speak to the common features between these two phenomena.  Among these are animal images, which  mostly  bear sacrificial symbolic (sheep, stag, goat, bull). Gravestones often feature birds and flowers, which allude to the harmony of the Garden of Eden. Interesting parallels are also attested between Pirosmanashvili's work and gravestone decoration in the imagery of birds and flowers, where the bird appears as "the bird of life" and the flower as a symbol of life and youth. Niko Pirosmanashvili's use of birds and flowers as symbols of "love of life" resonates in its own way with the significance of these motives in memorial culture.

Furthermore, Pirosmanashvili’s familiarity with the specifics of gravestone language is reflected in the image of the cherub motif - angel with wings (without body), that is particularly characteristic of gravestone images and appears in two of Pirosmanashvili’s works, “The Lamb at the Cemetery with Angels” and “Easter Still Life.” These creatures are most frequently found at the corners of tombstones, and it is unsurprising that we also find them in a cemetery context in Pirosmanashvili's work.

The existence of a universal model for the memorial portrait and its accompanying program — one that spread throughout the country from the early 19th century through the early 20th century and encompassed all social strata — explains the clear precedents for the incorporation and use of this visual repertoire in the work of the self-taught artist.

Other similar connections  between Pirosmanashvili's paintings and various filed of folk decorative-applied arts can be seen in the figurative and zoomorphic imagery incorporated of folk ceramics, carpets and rugs, and woodcarving. Amongst these however, the Old Tbilisi silverware demands special attention, as its decoration system and Pirosmanashvili's thematic-iconographic repertoire reveals great affinity.

Old Tbilisi at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was a renowned center of craftsmanship, where guild workshops produced silver objects of various forms and purposes. The majority are wine vessels: azarpheshas (wine ladles), bowls, karkaras (jugs with spiral-twist spouts), jugs, kulas, mataras, horn vessels and others. This group of silver objects is executed in the repoussé technique, with surfaces covered in floral ornament within which figural images are incorporated in profiled cartouches.  The close examination of the figurative imagery of the silverware unveiled number of aspects, which are closely related to the iconography of Pirosmanashvili’s works.

Among the silverware patterns we can often see animal images, such as lions, stags/deer, lambs, eagles with the seized prey, which find parallels in Pirosmanashvili’s animal series.

Feast on the 19th century silver Karkara

Niko Pirosmani, Feast at Datiko Zemeli, Georgian National Museum

The silverware decoration also often features feast scenes frequently associated with wedding themes. These primarily depict church wedding ceremonies, a dancing couple accompanied by zurna and duduk, and table scenes showing women and men feasting. Their frontal compositional alignment, solemn character, and manner of rendering the spread table are reminiscent of the iconography of Pirosmanashvili's feast compositions, e.g., "The Feast with Organ-Player Datiko Zemeli." This resemblance is expressed in the similar rendering of the "still life" on the table (roasted chickens, bottles, plates), the frontal depiction of the figures, their postures (raised horn vessels), and their garments and accessories. The same can be said of the distribution of figures and their gestures (dancing, clapping) in the wedding and dance scenes, which are identical to the features seen in Pirosmanashvili's pictures "Church Festival in Kartli" and "Festive Easter Table." Similarities are also evident in the frontal depictions of musicians, with their instruments emphasized, and in the images of karachokheli and kinto types, where the characteristic details of their garments are rendered with great precision. Other vivid examples of shared schemes are Pirosmanashvili's series "Georgian Woman with Dayereh" and the images of women holding dayerehs found on silverware.

Among the parallels between the silverware iconography and Pirosmanashvili's work, the theme of the historical portrait deserves separate mention — particularly the images of Shota Rustaveli, Queen Tamar, and Erekle II. The silverware decoration follows an established iconography for these figures and reveals a great similarity to, for example, Pirosmanashvili's paired portraits of Shota and Tamar, where the pairing is thematically linked by a scroll bearing the text of "The Knight in the Panther's Skin." Multiple examples of analogous paired portraits exist in the decoration of various silver vessels, which speaks to the iconic importance of "The Knight in the Panther's Skin" in that period, and to the common perception of Shota Rustaveli and Queen Tamar as a couple. Here too we must note Pirosmanashvili's interest in the figure of Imam Shamil (1797–1871), an Avar political and religious leader of the Muslim tribes of the Northern Caucasus, who likewise appears on silverware, as well as the portrait "Giorgi Saakadze, the Great Mouravi" (1580–1629), whose iconographic prototype — apart from the Don Cristoforo De Castelli - (1600-1659) portrait — had until now been unknown, and is in fact abundantly attested in silverware. This points to the fact that Pirosmanashvili's series of historical portraits features characters very popular in 19th-century culture, which in turn serves as evidence of the strong influence of folk origins and motifs on Pirosmanashvili's work.

Giorgi Saakadze on the 19th century Silver Pitcher

Niko Pirosmani, Giorgi Saakadze the Grand Mouravi, Georgian National Museum

When studying the artistic preconditions of Niko Pirosmanashvili's work, the contemporaneous photography is also of interest: the static frontality of the period's salon photographic portraits and their full-height representation, the standard painted backdrops and the existence of certain "universal" accessories that were an indispensable part of the portrait "programme" for a person of a given age, gender, profession or social class. The representative, static character and a certain "timeless effect" go some way toward explaining the same characteristics typical of Niko Pirosmanashvili's group and individual portraits, which speaks to the shared thematic and iconographic agenda facing contemporaneous visual culture — and in turn broadens our perspective on the diverse artistic preconditions of the self-taught painter's work.

Through the outstanding individual talent and artistic vision, folk motifs in Pirosmanashvili's  works are elevated and transfigured into generalized, monumental paintings of striking power. The significance of this phenomenon is further amplified by the intuitive convergence of his pictorial language with the pioneering tendencies of the contemporaneous avant-garde. Taken together, these qualities establish the landmark significance of Pirosmani’s art, earning him his special place among the greatest artists of his time.