The article investigates the perception of the cultural and artistic production of the Southern Caucasus, after the annexation of Georgia in 1801, by three highly educated intellectuals of the time: the Metropolitan Evgeniy Bolkhovitinov, the historian Platon Ioseliani and the artist and architect Grigory Gagarin. Their writings reveal a latent concept of historical pre-eminence of the Caucasian region, and Georgia in particular, as a cultural and sacred outpost of two countries, the Byzantine Empire and the Empire of the Russian Monarchs of the 19th century.
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