Imeretia Ovalyanis Porträt eines kaukasischen Adligen, aufgenommen 1890 im Atelier des Fotografen Ermakov in Tiflis, Georgien

Great hair 👌

This is an example of information gradually getting lost as it’s repeated over and over by the internet. In this case, it’s clear to anyone who knows Georgia a bit that there is no such person named „Imeretia Ovalyani“, and that the photographer is simply Dmitri Ermakov, famous photographer of the Caucasus. This can be confirmed by older Reddit posts [https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/ylux92/portrait_of_caucasian_nobleman_from_imeretia/] and by the Wikimedia file [https://ka.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%A4%E1%83%90%E1%83%98%E1%83%9A%E1%83%98:Ermakov._%E2%84%96_8730_Noble_d%27Imeretie,_Ovalyani._Tbilissi_vers_1890_(A).jpg]. Now it’s evident, with the help of a bit more punctuation which has been lost in the cycles of copy-paste, that this nobleman is from the Georgian province of Imereti (called Imeretia by Russians) and that his surname is Ovaliani (spelled Ovalyani by Russians). Incidentally, I’ve never heard of this surname, so it’s possible it’s a further Russian butchering of a Georgian surname, or that he was from a minor noble family that didn’t do much significant and died out/emigrated during the Bolshevik Revolution.