Holy Image, Hallowed Ground - Icons From Sinai

This work features forty-three of the world's rarest - and rarely exhibited - icons. At the base of Mount Sinai sits the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the Christian world: The Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai which houses the most important collection of Byzantine icons remaining today. This catalogue, published in conjunction with the exhibition Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai (J. Paul Getty Museum, November 2006 - March 2007) features forty-three of the monastery's extremely rare - and rarely exhibited - icons and six manuscripts still little-known to the world at large. The exhibition and catalogue bring to life the central role of the icon in Byzantine times. Themes include the icon's status as holy object, ways in which icons sanctified the place of worship, and the monks' quest for the holy. The Greek Orthodox monastery at Mount Sinai not only functioned as a major pilgrimage site for centuries but was also a cultural crossroads. Accompanying essays explore how its contact with the outside world, through pilgrimage, resulted in aesthetic exchanges between the monastery and Coptic, Crusader, and Islamic art.