From Mleta to Gudauri

Painted in 1868, the work belongs to a period when Aivazovsky was broadening his already celebrated practice beyond his signature seascapes to encompass the mountainous landscapes of the Caucasus region, which the Russian Empire had recently consolidated through decades of war. The Georgian Military Highway, running from Vladikavkaz through the Daryal Gorge and down to Tbilisi, was both a strategic artery and a subject of intense Romantic fascination for Russian and European artists and writers alike. Pushkin and Lermontov had already mythologized this road in verse; Aivazovsky brought to it the same command of sublime atmosphere he had perfected on the Black Sea. His training at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and his long study of atmospheric luminism, informed by Claude-Joseph Vernet and J. M. W. Turner, gave him tools ideally suited to the problem of rendering altitude and haze. The painting demonstrates how completely he could transfer those tools from open water to sheer stone, using the same layered glazing technique to build the infinite recession of the mountain valley that he used to suggest oceanic depth.