The thirteenth-century cross-domed Church of St. George is an important component of the Gelati Monastery complex. The study of the paintings in its main interior and in the southern chapel of the western narthex-gateway entered a new stage after scaffolding was erected in the church and a team of restorers carried out preparatory work for rehabilitation and conservation in 2024–2025. The analysis of newly obtained data made it possible to identify painting layers executed at different periods over the centuries, including a previously unknown layer, and to determine their artistic and historical significance.
Three layers of painting were identified in the interior of the church. The earliest dates from the period of the church’s construction, that is, the mid-thirteenth century, and fragments of it are scattered throughout different parts of the main space. In the second half of the thirteenth century, the western part of the church was altered through the reconstruction of the narthex-gateway, and the small southern chapel was painted. Study of the paintings and of the image of the sole donor has made it possible to propose his identification. He may have been Anton, the confessor of David VI Narin (1246–1293) and modzghvartmodzghvari of Gelati Monastery, who is mentioned in a document dated 1260–1267 belonging to Queen Tamar, daughter of Emenelaisdze and wife of David Narin. It may be assumed that Anton was a bishop and, judging from certain iconographic details of the painting program, also a learned individual.
A second layer, executed on a different plaster ground, appears beneath the damaged principal paintings of the 1570s–1580s, in the sanctuary and the south arm, mainly in the form of ornamental decoration. This layer also belongs to a later period, probably the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries.
The most important, however, is the third layer, preserved to the present day and executed between 1578 and 1583 at the commission of Eudemon I Chkhetidze, Catholicos of Western Georgia (1545–1578), and King George II of Imereti (1565–1583). These paintings represent a remarkable example of the high artistic style and technical mastery of their period.
In terms of specific iconographic details, coloristic treatment, and the artistic modeling of forms, the paintings display clear similarities to the 1535 frescoes by Theophanes the Cretan in the katholikon of the Great Lavra on Mount Athos and, more broadly, to the artistic achievements of the sixteenth-century “Cretan” school. For this reason, the principal painting cycle of the Church of St. George at Gelati may be regarded not only as an outstanding work within Georgian art, but also as one of the highly accomplished examples of Eastern Christian monumental painting of the post-Byzantine period.