T+L Reports: Artifacts

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through July 4, "Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)" showcases more than 350 masterpieces from 30 nations—France, Egypt, and Serbia among them—that came under the hegemony of Christendom's Eastern empire. Besides frescoes, textiles, and illuminated manuscripts, the show gathers some of the best examples of the icon-painting for which Byzantium was famed, including 40 from the sixth-century Holy Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, Egypt, which is still in operation today.
—Andrey Slivka