Rene Schmerling (b. Tbilisi, Georgia, 1901 – d. 1967, Tbilisi, Georgia) was a Georgian-German art historian and art critic. She was the daughter of graphic artist and painter Oskar Schmerling and Anzhelika Salzmann, a teacher. After graduation from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1929, she worked at the State Museum of Georgia. She was one of the favorite students of Giorgi Chubinashvili, the Georgian Art historian who made a great contribution in establishing the Institute of History of Georgian Art (today the National Centre for the Study of Georgian Art History and Heritage Protection named after Giorgi Chubinashvili), where she worked as a researcher until her death in 1967. Her works were devoted to the study of medieval Georgian architecture and architectural décor, old Georgian sculpture, manuscript book decoration and paleography, ironworking and illuminated manuscripts. She was known as the collector of Ex-libris. In 2013 Tbilisi hosted an exhibition of her unique collection of ex-libris, which includes more than two hundred unique samples of Georgian, Armenian, Russian, and European ex-libris – from the XIX century to the 30s of the XX century.
