Introduction

In world art history, the chapter "Byzantium" usually ends with a reference to the art of the Palaeologeian era, the last one to produce works of art of international importance and great value. Nevertheless, the religious art of the Eastern Roman Empire was not eradicated on the morrow of Constantinople's capture by the Ottomans, on 1453. The art of iconography, in particular, has survived during the next five centuries. And, even in our days, it certainly is not just a museum piece, as one can easily ascertain while visiting the churches, the monasteries and the houses of the regions where Orthodox Christians live.

True, no monumental works, no majestic mosaics in cathedrals adorned with gold will appear ever again. Neither sponsoring emperors, nor cultural centres radiating with the splendour of Constantinople, or even of Thessaloniki or Mystras. Even the right to the refurbishment of churches was contested during the early centuries of the Turkish rule. Wars, poverty, islamisations and piracy fill in the picture. Nonetheless, new iconography schools and tendencies emerge during those hard times and new solutions are worked out to the artistic challenges arriving from the West. The provenance of the contemporary orthodox iconography tradition is traced back to the achievements of those years (16th - 18th centuries).

Essential sponsors in the conquered regions were the monastic communities, most important among which was the community of Mount Athos, as well as local Christian dignitaries (initially collaborators of the central Ottoman authorities, later rich merchants).

Major Orthodox areas remain outside the Ottoman rule. In the Islands of the Aegean and the Ionian, and especially in Crete, under Venetian administration, emerged the most important artistic school, for its quality and its historic eminence. Moldavia, a semi-autonomous province, enters its first cultural flourish. Russia remains the sole important independent Orthodox Christian state. It gradually develops its own artistic style, while at the same time it supports financially the artistic production of the enslaved Orthodox populations, because of an inherited cultural tradition and also in view of a penetrating foreign policy.

The painting above (St. Aikatherini), today at Simonopetras Monastery in Mount Athos, originated in a Macedonian workshop (end of 15th - beginning of 16th centuries).