Hagia Eirene’s rare Iconoclastic apse mosaic — a golden cross on gold, outlined in black tesserae — creates a sublime, almost divine luminosity through its masterful, light-reflecting technique.
The Samnite House in Herculanium
Herculaneum’s Samnite House, dating to the 2nd century BC, is a remarkable survivor — its frescoed fauces, Corinthian columns, and ornate atrium offering an intimate glimpse into ancient Roman domestic life.
Monemvasia by Konstantinos Maleas
Maleas’s Monemvasia — held in the Bank of Greece’s remarkable 3,000-piece collection — captures the rugged, historic beauty of a Byzantine city legendarily founded with just one entrance to the sea.
Portrait Medallion of Gennadios
Gennadios — a gold-on-sapphire-glass portrait medallion from Alexandria — is an exquisitely engraved masterpiece celebrating a musically accomplished youth, and one of the most captivating Late Antique treasures at the Metropolitan Museum.
The Labours of the Months: September
A unknown Venetian artist’s September — a man pressing grapes beneath a vine — forms part of a vivid Renaissance painted door series depicting the traditional twelve Labours of the Months.
End of the Season by William Merritt Chase
Chase’s End of the Season — a lone woman amid empty tables by a choppy shore — beautifully captures summer’s melancholic farewell, rendered in his masterful, modernist pastel technique.
Maiolica Credenza
Eleonora Gonzaga’s magnificent gift to her mother Isabella d’Este — twenty-three maiolica dishes by Nicola da Urbino, the “Raphael of Maiolica” — united mythology, Renaissance patronage, and extraordinary ceramic artistry.
Off the harbor by Ioannis Altamouras
Altamouras’s moody seascape Off the Harbor — boats dissolving into a blue-white sky with no clear horizon — reflects his Impressionist awakening at Denmark’s celebrated Skagen Colony, tragically cut short by tuberculosis.
The Byzantine Icon of Panagia Nicopoiou
Venice’s treasured Panagia Nikopoiou — a Byzantine Komnenian icon seized during the Fourth Crusade — became La Serenissima’s sacred Palladium, carried in procession during war and plague for divine protection and victory.
The Formidable Queen Tiye
Queen Tiye — formidable wife of Amenhotep III and grandmother of Tutankhamun — was dramatically identified through hair analysis, matching her mummy to a lock buried in Tutankhamun’s tomb since 1922.