Who is represented?
Browse Christ, the Virgin, saints, angels, emperors, donors, and recurring sacred figures.
Explore →Byzantine Iconography Universe
Learn to read an image as a world of relationships.
Move from a figure, gesture, inscription, material, place, or surviving object into the wider visual language of Byzantium. Historical evidence and interpretation remain visibly distinct.
Start with what you noticed
Three entrances into the same graph.
Begin with a figure, a composition, or the signs and materials inside the image. Each entrance converges on connected records.
What composition is this?
Use five Atlas families, direct graph lenses, and side-by-side comparison to distinguish the 12 current named types.
Open the Atlas →What am I looking at?
Decode gestures, inscriptions, halos, gold, mosaic, fresco, enamel, ivory, and sacred-space placement.
Explore →376stable entities
835explicit relationships
12Atlas icon types
30verified objects
BIU016 evidence boundary354 records currently carry source-backed, qualified-source-backed, or verified-object evidence states. Atlas family labels are navigation synthesis, not new historical claims. No generated visual is presented as a historical artifact, and museum object images are not hotlinked in this release.
Ten domains
A universe designed to connect.
Each domain is a stable navigation and data concept, not a claim that the current release has exhausted every branch.
Sacred Figures & Subjects
People and sacred personages represented in icons and related media.
Enter domain →Iconographic Types
Recurring named compositions and representational types.
Enter domain →Scenes & Feasts
Narrative scenes and subjects drawn from Christian scripture, liturgy and hagiography.
Enter domain →Symbols, Gestures & Inscriptions
The signs, words, gestures and compositional conventions that help identify and interpret imagery.
Enter domain →Materials & Techniques
How sacred images were made across portable and monumental media.
Enter domain →Architecture & Sacred Space
Relationships between imagery, church interiors and zones such as dome, apse and screen.
Enter domain →History & Iconoclasm
Chronological and institutional changes affecting image production, use, destruction and restoration.
Enter domain →Places & Artistic Networks
Cities, monasteries, regions and transmission routes connected to Byzantine image culture.
Enter domain →Objects & Collections
Source-backed museum objects, manuscripts, panels, pendants, reliefs and architectural decoration.
Enter domain →Legacy & Transmission
How Byzantine image traditions were copied, adapted and transmitted beyond the empire.
Enter domain →Rights-aware Object Archive
Start from things that actually exist.
30 verified museum records keep object identity, source provenance, image rights, and delivery state separate. Authentic images remain unbundled when source bytes cannot be retained locally.
Icon with Christ Pantokrator (Met 17.190.66)
Byzantine ivory icon, 11th–12th century, used as a source-backed BIU001 object seed.
objectivoryPantokrator
Explore →Icon with the Virgin and Child (Met 17.190.103)
Byzantine ivory following the Hodegetria type, dated mid-10th–mid-11th century in the Met record.
objectivoryHodegetria
Explore →Icon with the Deesis (Met 17.190.133)
Mid-10th-century Byzantine ivory Deesis used as a source-backed BIU001 object seed.
objectivoryDeesis
Explore →Double-Sided Pendant Icon (Met 1994.403)
A ca. 1100 Constantinopolitan gold and cloisonné enamel pendant with Christ Pantokrator and the Virgin Hagiosoritissa.
objectpendantenamelConstantinople
Explore →Portable Icon with the Virgin Eleousa
Early-1300s Byzantine miniature-mosaic icon of the Virgin Eleousa, registered as a source-backed museum object.
objectmosaic2008.352
Explore →Icon with Christ Pantepotes and the Chorus of Saints
Fourteenth- to fifteenth-century Byzantine steatite icon centered on Christ Pantepotes and surrounded by scenes and choruses of saints.
objectstone-gem63.68.1–.13
Explore →Discovery Engine
Entry context: home · canonical graph onlyStart with a record. Follow only explainable next steps.
Move through explicit edges, visible two-step paths, specialist systems, BIU012 learning, and labeled navigation-synthesis themes. No popularity ranking, opaque similarity score, or personal profiling.
ICU / CONNECTED DISCOVERY
Continue through related ideas.
These are bounded editorial connections; paid placement does not influence them.
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See reverse connections
Across ICU · explainable bridges
Continue into another specialist world.
These are reviewed cross-universe connections with an explicit relationship type and uncertainty boundary. A bridge is not a claim of influence, causation, or shared taxonomy.