Fall and Transmission

When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Byzantine scholars and artists fled to Italy, bringing manuscripts, techniques, and ideas that fueled the Renaissance. El Greco — born Doménikos Theotokópoulos in Crete — trained as a Byzantine icon painter before moving to Venice and Spain, carrying the tradition into Western art.

The tradition survives in Orthodox churches worldwide, where icon painters still follow conventions developed in Constantinople over a millennium ago. Byzantine visual language shaped Russian, Georgian, Ethiopian, and Balkan artistic traditions.