The Beautiful Frescoes of Mikhail Nesterov in the Church of Alexander Nevsky at Abastumani in Georgia

The beautiful frescoes of Mikhail Nesterov in the Church of Alexander Nevsky at Abastumani in Georgia. This is a unique case: the entire interior of the church was painted in fresco by Nesterov himself, without the help of other artists: 56 compositions in 8 years.

Nesterov's biography in the series «Lives of Remarkable People» relates the following:

«Nesterov learned from a letter of Count Tolstoy, Vice-President of the Academy of Arts, that the heir to the Russian throne, Tsesarevich Georgy Alexandrovich, had expressed a firm wish that Nesterov should paint the church of Alexander Nevsky built by Georgy Alexandrovich at Abastumani. The artist was granted complete freedom in decorating the church. There were no commissions and no clerical censors. No deadlines were set; the whole matter was left to the creative will of the artist.»

The church at Abastumani is regarded as a monument to the Romanov dynasty. Its construction was conceived by Grand Duke Georgy Alexandrovich. It stands in his Georgian estate, on the grounds of the mountain-climate resort of Abbas-Tuman, at an altitude of 1,300 metres on the southern slope of the Meskheti Range near Borjomi, where he, stricken with tuberculosis, lived out the remainder of his 28 years, never seeing the completion of the church not far from his palace.

The church was built in the canonical style of ancient Georgian architecture by the court architect Otto Simson, and in part it recalls the 14th-century church at Zarzma.