Icons of the Hellenic World: from the collection of Argie and Emmanuel Tiliakos, Museum of Russian Icons, June 22–October 21, 2018

Icons of the Hellenic World is the first major exhibition at the Museum of Russian Icons that focuses exclusively on Greek and Byzantine iconography. On view June 22 – October 21, 2018, the exhibit delves deeply into the links and the continuity of Greek art and culture from Late Antiquity, through Byzantium, to the present.

Largely comprised of icons created after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, Icons of the Hellenic World will also feature works from the Byzantine period (330AD-1453). The earliest object in the exhibition is a rare “Portrait of Man” from Fayum, Egypt, produced in the 1st or 2nd century CE, and painted in the encaustic technique, a wax painting method practiced in ancient Greece that probably originated in Egypt. Encaustic portraits are thought to be prototypes for painting the earliest Christian icons.

The exhibition features numerous icons and objects from the Cretan School as well as pieces from the Greek Islands of the Aegean Sea, and the so-called Ionian School. This was the art produced in the Ionian Islands by Cretan artists who took refuge on these Venetian-held islands after the fall of Crete to the Ottoman Turks in 1667. The School of the Ionian Islands produced some famous and talented artists who provide a direct link from the art of Byzantium to modern Greece.