Renė Shmerling

Rene Oskarovna Schmerling (; December 5, 1901 – February 18, 1967) was a Georgian art historian and art critic famous for her work on medieval and Byzantine Georgian art.

Biography Born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1901, Schmerling was the daughter of painter and graphic artist Oscar Schmerling.

She graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1929. She trained many future scholars of Georgian art.

She was also an art critic. At one of the first artistic exhibitions in Tbilisi after the loosening of censorship with the death of Stalin in 1953, she said, "I am glad that browns have left these walls and that true colors shine on them now."

Her collection of bookplates (ex libris), which includes works by famous Georgian artists and Nikoloz Chernishkov (ru), was the subject of an exhibition in 2014.

Selected publications

Samples of Decorative Decoration of Georgian Manuscripts (Obrazcy dekorativnogo ubranstva gruzinskich rukopisej: al'bom iz 32 tabljc),Tbilisi: Gruzinskaja filial Akademii nauk SSSR, 1940. Georgian Architectural Ornaments (Gruzinskij architekturyj ornament), Tbilisi: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1954. Outskirts of Tbilisi: an Architectural Guide (Okrestnosti Tbilisi : architekturnyi putevoditel'), Tbilisi: Izd. Akad. Nauk. Gruzinskoj SSR, 1960. Forms in the Architecture of Medieval Georgia (Малые формы в архитектуре средневековой Грузии., Malye formy v arkhitekture srednevekovoĭ Gruzii), Tbilisi: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk Gruzinskoĭ SSR, 1962. Illuminations of Books and Manuscripts (Chudožestvennoe oformlenie gruzinskoj rukopisnoj knigi IX - XI vv) Tbilisi: Met︠s︡niereba, 1967–1979. Sepulchral Tombs in Dagestan (Rez'ba po kamnju v Dagestane), 1966. Metechi Temple in Tbilisi (Chram Metechi v Tbilisi), Tbilisi: Izd. Mezniereba, 1969.(published posthumously). Ot Tbilisi do Kavkavi, Mecʻniereba, 1991 (published posthumously).