Athens - Byzantine Museum

The left wing at the Byzantine Museum contains a large collection of icons. Room 1: A range of icons on the life, passion and resurrection of Christ; the Trinity; Christ Pantocrator (Ruler of All); life of the mother of God; various saints. Room 2: Icons of the 16th and 17th centuries, including St Anthony (T 211), the Panayía Kardiótissa (T 1,582), St John the Evangelist (T 1,052) and St Eleutherius (T 144). At one end of the room are an iconostasis and (to the right of this) a small tripartite altar (400). On the right-hand wall are the Life of the Mother of God (T 1,561) and the Hospitality of Abraham (T 590). Room 3: Icons by Constantine and Emmanuel Tsanes. Room 4: Icons of the 17th and 18th century.

Byzantine Museum main building (ground floor): The rooms on this floor illustrate the development of the church interior. Room 1: A scaled-down reconstruction of an early Christian basilica, with the templon, the screen which separates the chancel (bema), in which are the altar and the seats for the clergy (synthronon), from the rest of the church. Room 3: A typical middle Byzantine domed cruciform church (ninth-11th C.), with a sculptured eagle on the floor marking the omphalos (navel). Room 4: Example of a post-Byzantine church (17th-18th C.) with a carved and gilded iconostasis.

Individual items of particular interest: Room 1: Sculptured representations of the Good Shepherd (92), in which the old type of the lamb-carrier is applied to Christ, and Orpheus (93). Room 2: Byzantine reliefs, including a number of rare relief icons. Main building (upper floor): Numerous icons including some works of art from the post-Byzantine Cretan school. Room 1: A mosaic icon of the mother of God Episkepsis (145: 14th C.), Gospel books, historical documents (among them a chrysobull of the Emperor Andronikos II dated 1301). Room 2: Gold jewellery from Lésbos. Room 4: Liturgical utensils and vestments (particularly notable being a 14th C. epitaphios from Salonica - an embroidered pall used in the representation of the Holy Sepulchre on Good Friday); wall painting from Oropós.

The right-hand wing at the Byzantine Museum contains late Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons (13th-16th centuries). There is a particularly interesting group opposite the entrance: a 12th C. icon of the Mother of God, with the version overpainted in the 17th C., which has recently been detached.