A mother lode of Orthodox imagery comes into print via the monks of St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, world-famous for its Byzantine art, and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, which houses various Byzantine masterpieces as shown here. Covering the time from the rise of Byzantium to the last tsar of Russia, this lavishly illustrated volume presents an unbroken tradition in Orthodox painting from the sixth through the 20th centuries. Other typically Byzantine items are also included: religious mosaics, amphoras, plates, liturgical crosses and vessels, coins, and illuminated manuscript pages from St. Catherine's superlative collection of historic Christian texts, the largest outside the Vatican.