Around the year 300, with the spread of Christianity, the realism of Greco-Roman art began to be abandoned. The representation of the deities as if they were ordinary people came to be perceived as idolatry.
After legalizing Christianity in 313, Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of his empire from Rome to Byzantium, changing its name to Constantinople. Byzantine art developed there from about 330 to 1453. Derived from elements of Greek, Roman and Egyptian art, it expresses a strong sense of order. There are no naked or narrative images, for this art was created to speak to the spectators of God, the saints and the Scriptures.
With Christianity, Byzantine art spread elsewhere, such as Ravenna, Venice, Sicily, Greece and Russia. The main remaining examples are frescoes and mosaics that adorned the large vaulted churches built to express the omnipresence of God, but there are also wooden paintings with encaustics, small bas-reliefs and illuminated manuscripts. Flat and stylized icons of sacred figures predominated, whose artists remained anonymous. What counted was the veneration of God, not of individuals.

The term Byzantine refers to the art of the Eastern Roman Christian Empire and other areas that were influenced by it. The aim of this art, which was primarily concerned with the representation of the divine, was not naturalism, but the transmission of power and mystery. Even during the decline of the Roman Empire, Byzantine art remained dominant in certain territories, such as Venice and Norman Sicily.

MAIN SITES: BYZANCE (ISTANBUL) • RAVENNA, ITALY • KIEV, UKRAINE • MOSCOW, RUSSIA