Khobi Diptych

Abstract

Christian relics and icons have been treated in a similar manner throughout the centuries. Precious metal embellishments, precious stones, pearls and enamels were used to enhance the meaning of sacred objects. Precious materials and iconographic programs served to reveal the religious significance of cult objects, both relics and images. Additional embellishments received in the course of the centuries by the sacred objects transformed their initial fabric, meaning and context. The paper examines a diptych from the monastery of Khobi commissioned by Eristavt Eristavi Shergil in the first half of the 14th c. for a pectoral reliquary cross of the celebrated Georgian monarch, King of King Tamar (1160-1213). The Khobi diptych has a multiple semantic levels and bridges diverse historical periods and characters.

The cross, a luxurious piece of jewelry decorated with precious stones and pearls, was incorporated into diptych decorated with painting, niello ornamentation, and repousse revetment. The program of decoration of the triptych illustrates the salvational sacrifice of Christ. The Man of Sorrow, together with the grieving Virgin and St. John the Evangelist depicted on the inner sides of the diptych is linked to the liturgy of Good Friday and stresses the relics of the True Cross housed in the Tamar’s pectoral cross.

Shergil Dadiani was presumably a governor of Odishi (western Georgia). Possession of the True Cross relics was a privilege of representatives of power and thus the creation of the diptych must be considered from the perspective of power. It could be assumed that commissioning of the diptych-reliquary for Tamar’s pectoral cross was a powerful statement of Shergil’s status and authority.