Past Exhibitions

Icons of the Hellenic World was the first major exhibition at the Museum of Russian Icons that focused exclusively on Greek and Byzantine iconography. The exhibit delved 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 also featured works from the Byzantine period (330 CE to 1453). The earliest object is a rare “Portrait of Man” from Fayum, Egypt, produced in the 1^st or 2^nd century CE and painted using 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 featured 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, 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 talented artists who provided a direct link from the art of Byzantium to modern Greece.

A leading international expert in the field of Greek icons and an avid collector of Greek and Russian icons since his university days, Athens-born Emmanuel Tiliakos has been interested in icons long before they were considered “works of art” by most collectors.