Oshki
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Oshki (Georgian: ოშკი) is a Georgian monastery from the second half of the tenth century located in the historic province of Tao, now in North-eastern Turkey. The main church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, was built between 963 and 973.
[edit] Architectural sculpture and figurative reliefs
The blind arches are an important part of the whole decoration. In Oshki they stretch along the outer walls of the church in the south, east and north. It is an early example of the use of decorative blind arches on the facades. They devide the wall in line with the general architectural rhythm. The central part of the facade is mainly decorated with bas-reliefs.
Bas-reliefs, placed high above the central arch, are given the place of honour on the southern facade, which is the main facade of the church. They stand out from the flat surface. The eagle with an animal in his talons probably symbolises victory, and the whole sculptural composition the triumph of the heavenly forces represented by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. In the province of Tao the power lay in the hands of the ruling dynasty of the Bagrationi, whose members Bagrat eristavt-eristavi and David Magistros are depicted lower down on the same facade, near the deesis, to show that the heavenly forces were the family's patrons.
The figures are well proportioned, elegant in contour and form. The static postures of earlier donor portaits give way to free movement, and an equal attempt can be traced in the near three-dimensional renderings of the archangels and the deesis of the southern facade, as well as on a column in the southern gallery. The decorative system of the Oshki church also includes the low reliefs characteristic of the so-called transitional period in medieval Georgian art (eighth - tenth centuries), when the old style had not yet given way completely, and new ways were evolving. Sculptors of the different generations must have worked on it. The church in Oshki already shows the tendencies that would eventually develop in the eleventh century.
