One of the most interesting and striking paintings by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov is “Georgian Military Road near Mtskheta”. It came to the Lermontov Museum from the descendants of journalist Andrey Krayevsky. The painting shows the confluence of the Aragvi and Kura rivers, where the events of the poem “The Novice” (Mtsyri) take place. In the foreground, Lermontov depicted the ruins of a fortress tower and a saklya (a traditional Georgian stone house) on the high bank of the Kura. He added interest to the scene by including staffage — human and animal figures. On the opposite side of the river on the mountain there is the Jvari Monastery: it was here that the novice languished.

The location where Lermontov created his artwork is authentic, yet it also depicts the world of a romantic poem. The poet was able to capture the contrast between light and shadow that is characteristic of the Southern landscape. It is most evident in the foreground: it features dark mountains and foliage on the left, as well as the saklya and watchtower, illuminated by the bright sunlight. Some of Lermontov’s contemporaries, such as Krayevsky, argued that the poet had brought not only drawings from the Caucasus region, but also completed paintings. It is possible that one of these paintings was the canvas “Georgian Military Road near Mtskheta”.

There is also the account of Lermontov’s second cousin, Akim Shan-Giray, who stated,

The writer Pavel Viskovatov commented,

The painting entered the Pushkin House in 1917 from the Lermontov Museum at the Nicholas Cavalry School, where it had been transferred in 1890 by the descendants of Andrey Krayevsky, Lermontov’s friend and executor.

“The Novice” is a romantic poem by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, written in 1839 and published (with censored passages) in 1840 in his only lifetime edition — the collection “Poems of M. Lermontov”. The work belongs to Lermontov’s late Caucasian texts and is considered one of the last examples of classic Russian romantic poetry.