Byzantine Art

Icons and mosaics floating on gold ground. Painting here was a window for prayer before it was something to look at. The gold background, with no horizon and no time in it, exists to separate the figure from our world. So the style does not change. Not changing was what made it correct. And this stretch of the map holds one of the fiercest confrontations in the history of art, a movement to destroy the icons themselves. Twice, from around 726 until 843, icons were smashed. It was settled in 843: the side that accepted icons won, and the day is still called the Triumph of Orthodoxy. What's striking is that objects made during the years of destruction survive even now, the reliquary box shown here dates to the early 9th century, made in the middle of that very storm. Even while it was being denied, people did not stop making.