For the people of Byzantium, their architectural works, frescoes, mosaics, ivories, chalices, bejewelled gospel covers and qlany other opulent works of art were the material proof of their greatness and power over the Mediterranean states. The vast range of these riches is illustrated in this complete account of Byzantine art from the reign of Justinian to the fall of Constantinople.

David Talbot Rice, one of the greatest authorities on Byzantine art, travelled as far afield as the rock churches of Cappadocia and Cilicia, the tufa monuments of Armenia and Georgia, and the thirteenth-century ceramic factories of Bulgaria, now buried in the alluvial mud of the Danube. His book is a masterly survey of an art of magnificence and power that belonged to a great and sophisticated society.