The history of Georgian fine arts has preserved the sad love story of two great artists. It was love with a tragic end that left an irreversible wound on Ketevan Magalashvili's noble soul and the entire cultural elite of Georgia. In 1938, Ketevan’s husband, Dimitri Shevardnadze, one of the most famous of Georgian artists, was labeled an "enemy of the people." Later, he was imprisoned and executed. They say that for a time afterwards, Ketevan refused to leave the house and locked herself in. According to her family members, she even stopped working, at a complete loss, asking again and again, "Why?" "What for?" No-one could answer these questions.

In the late fifth century, King Vakhtang Gorgasali of Iberia (Eastern Georgia) established twelve new episcopal sees in his kingdom. One of these was Nikozi, where according to his chronicler, Vakhtang built a church “on the hearth of a fire-temple.”

From the 1880s to 1910, a new stage began in Georgia’s fine arts development, propelled by professionally educated artists of the older generation that "gave birth" to modern Georgian secular painting. It was a move that partially broke the link with the Tiflis feudal, oriental, and portraiture painting school, which ceased to exist in 1880.