HISTORY HOUR
The Lost Panels of Goa
Reconstructing the Visual Cult of Saint Queen Ketevan
Marietta Chikhladze
Assistant Professor, Ilia State University, Tbilisi
Moderated by
Francesco Gusella
Researcher, University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Napoli
Thursday, 26 February 2026 | 6 pm
Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Porvorim, Goa
Please join us for a History Hour lecture on ‘The Lost Panels of Goa: Reconstructing the Visual Cult of Saint Queen Ketevan’ by Marietta Chikhladze and moderated by Francesco Gusella on Thursday, 26 February 2026 at 6 pm at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Porvorim, Goa.
Please join us for tea at 5:30 pm.
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The Lost Panels of Goa
Reconstructing the Visual Cult of Saint Queen Ketevan
Saint Queen Ketevan (c.1560-1624), a central figure in Georgian history and Christian memory, occupies a unique position as both a political ruler and a martyr. Executed in Safavid Iran, her death and the translation of her relics to Old Goa by Portuguese Augustinian missionaries fostered the development of a transregional cult extending from Georgia to the Portuguese colonial world.
By the eighteenth century, her image circulated across distinct visual traditions shaped by local artistic conventions and theological frameworks. Georgian iconography presented her as a royal martyr firmly rooted in the Orthodox tradition, whereas Portuguese works — produced mainly in Lisbon at the Graça Monastery — reinterpreted her sanctity through Catholic hagiography and missionary ideology. These representations will be analysed not merely as devotional objects but as instruments of cultural translation and confessional dialogue.
Archival records from Goa mention a “painted canvas of the Holy Shroud; three paintings for the altars; ten panels of the Queen’s martyrdom,” probably executed by Aleixo Godinho, as noted by Vítor Serrão. Although these ten panels are now lost, their trace in the archives raises important questions about artistic production and missionary networks. This lecture explores her seventeenth- and eighteenth-century representations and examines how her cult traversed Portuguese imperial routes from Georgia to Persia, Goa and Lisbon.
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Marietta Chikhladze
Marietta Chikhladze holds a PhD in Modern, Comparative and Postcolonial Literature from the University of Bologna. She is an Assistant Professor at Ilia State University, Tbilisi, where she teaches comparative literature of Romance-language cultures. Her research examines representations of Georgia in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century archival and visual materials produced by Catholic missionaries. She works extensively on the drawings and writings of the Sicilian missionary Cristoforo Castelli, as well as on representations of Saint Queen Ketevan in Portuguese visual and textual sources, exploring how these materials construct cultural and historical narratives of early modern Georgia.
Francesco Gusella
Francesco Gusella is a historian of South Asian art with a focus on Portuguese India during the early modern period. He earned his PhD in 2019 at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, with a thesis on Christian devotional ivories from Portuguese colonial India. He conducted extensive research in archives, museums, research centres and private collections in Portugal, Italy, Germany and India by publishing on several art traditions, including metalworks, textiles, carvings, painting and architecture. From 2025, he is postdoctoral researcher and member of the Institute for the Study of the Christian Orient at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” where he teaches history of the missions through an art historical perspective. He is the author of the upcoming book: The Good Shepherd Rockery from Portuguese India, 1570s to 1650s: Emulation and Dissimulation in a case of Missionary Art (New York: Routledge, 2026).
Xavier Centre of Historical Research
B B Borkar Road, Porvorim, Goa 403521, India
xchr.in | in...@xchr.in
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