(1907, Tbilisi – 1985, Tbilisi)
Art historian, specialist in Georgian monumental painting.

In 1924, after completing secondary school, she studied for several years at the Painting Faculty of the Tbilisi Academy of Arts, while simultaneously attending the Faculty of History at Tbilisi State University, from which she graduated in 1929. She completed her postgraduate studies in Leningrad, under the supervision of the renowned Byzantinist Dmitry Ainalov. She worked at the Art Museum as head of the “Metekhi” department.

She was one of the founders of the G. Chubinashvili Institute of Georgian Art History. From 1941 until the end of her life, she worked at the Institute, where for a quarter of a century she headed, first, the Department of Fine Arts and later the Department of Medieval Fine Arts. T. Virsaladze was closely involved in the preservation of cultural monuments, serving as a scholarly consultant on the restoration of painted monuments.

Her research played a decisive role in the scholarly study of medieval Georgian wall painting—clarifying its historical stages, artistic schools, and the distinctive features and value of individual monuments. She also devoted numerous works to Georgian fine art of the 19th and 20th centuries.

T. Virsaladze earned high esteem not only among scholars of Georgian art, but also among researchers of Byzantine and, more broadly, Eastern Christian art.

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