Description
In the jewel-like mosaics of Ravenna, the dazzling domed interior of Hagia Sophia, the penetrating stare of holy figures in Orthodox icons, we come face-to-face with the visual splendor and spiritual power of Byzantine art. Created in the thousand-year period between 330 and the conquest of the Byzantine capital Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Byzantine art transformed Roman classical traditions. The human figure lost its corporeality. The church building itself was a microcosm of the universe. Byzantine art lives on in the art and architecture of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
