I do not know if any of you are in drivable distance of New York City, but if you are, the Onasis Center (645 Fifth Avenue) has an exhibit of post-Byzantine Era icons through February 18th. If you go and visit, they give you a coffee table book of the icons with full descriptions. With the upcoming 3-day holiday weekend, I thought some might want to do this on Monday if they are close-by.
Here's the description from http://www.onassisusa.org/
November 6, 2002 - February 8, 2003 Extended until February 19th, 2003
POST-BYZANTIUM: THE GREEK RENAISSANCE
15th - 18th Century Treasures from The Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens
Post-Byzantium: The Greek Renaissance, an exhibition of rare treasures from The Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens opens at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York on November 6, the first exhibition in the United States to focus on this area of art history.
Fifty works in various media, from paintings to filigree, highlight the range and influence of the Byzantine tradition that continued after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Most of the works in the exhibition, including such masterpiece icons as St.Antonios and The Three Hierarchs, by the 16th century Cretan master Michael Damaskenos, have never been shown in the U.S.
Traditionally, art historians have focused their celebration of these centuries on the artistic developments and influences of the Renaissance in Western Europe, while the study of Byzantine art has often left off with the collapse of the Empire in the East. Post-Byzantium illuminates the persistence of the highly influential Byzantine style through this political change and for centuries afterwards. The pervasive strength of Byzantine culture meant that its artistic tradition continued to flourish after the disbanding of the Empire - a "Byzantium after Byzantium," in effect a Greek renaissance. Furthermore, the Eastern Orthodox Church, which served as a cohesive social and cultural institution, subsequently formalized many of the guidelines for artistic production in reverence for the Church's teachings and theological perspectives.
Sculpture, architecture, and particularly painting in the classic Byzantine style remained widespread in the world after the Fall. Byzantine artists and artisans from Crete, the Ionian Islands, Venice, and Ottoman held Central Greece and Asia Minor continued to work in communities that were far flung across the former empire. Although many of these artists were not celebrated as individual geniuses, subsequent study of Post-Byzantium has identified a number of them as unqualified masters of their genres.
Post-Byzantium is grouped into three thematic sections, including Icons, Golden Embroidered Textiles, and The Flourishing of Minor Arts, which includes art of gold and silver, enamels, filigrees, and carved wooden crosses.
Icons, the largest section, is divided into sections from Constantinople-Crete, Italian-Cretan Works, Cretan Maistors, and Wall Paintings. The emphasis on different geographical areas reflects a historical moment in the spread of flourishing Post-Byzantine culture, which took place in all parts of the former empire. Men of letters and artists had begun gathering in Italy long before the Fall of the Empire, and after the Fall, Venice came to be known as 'the second Byzantium'.
Golden Embroidered Textiles presents a series of priests' garments, elaborately embroidered in the signature decorative Byzantine style. This section also includes an 18th century epitaphios, a type of embroidery that depicts Christ's bier and is common in Orthodox iconography.
Post-Byzantium: The Greek Renaissance is curated by Dr. Eugenia Chalkia, Deputy Director of The Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens, which rarely lends works in its holdings.