Byzantium through the Centuries, The State Hermitage Museum, June 25–October 2, 2016

As part of the Year of Greece in Russia and Russia in Greece 2016, the exhibition Byzantium through the Centuries at the State Hermitage spans from the from the early centuries to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 and aims to draw particular attention to the aesthetics, artistic style, beauty and harmony of Byzantine art.

The exhibition includes sculpture, fragments of floor and wall mosaics, fragments of frescoes, bronze liturgical vessels, gold jewellery, cloisonné enamels, a 13th-century Shroud of Christ from Thessaloniki, illuminated manuscripts of the 10th–15th centuries, and painted icons of the 12th to mid-15th centuries, supplemented by a unique mosaic Virgin Episkepsis. Lenders to the exhibition include museums, libraries, and monasteries in Athens, Thessaloniki, Kastoria, Veria, Corinth, Sparta, Rhodes, Argos, Chalcis, Boeotia, Serres, Lesbos, and the Cyclades.

The exhibition has been organized by the State Hermitage and the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Hellenic Republic. The curator is Yuri Alexandrovich Pyatnitsky, senior researcher of the Byzantium and Middle East Sector of the State Hermitage’s Department of the East.