The Moslem followers of Mohammed the Conqueror who triumphantly stormed Constantinople in 1453 were so successful in covering up all traces of Christianity that for almost five centuries Byzantine art—once the glory of Eastern Christendom—could be judged only through the examples that survived outside the Moslem world. Then, in 1935, Turkey's Kemal Ataturk declared Istanbul's Church of St. Sophia a historical monument, and cleared the way for Western experts to remove the plaster and paint that pious, iconoclastic Moslems had daubed over the great Christian mosaics. Since then each fragmentary restoration has added new proof of the power and achievement of...
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