Byzantine icon painting emerged in the Byzantine Empire - the Christian empire of the Hellenistic East during the years 330-1453 - as a fully fledged and widely spread art around 500 BC. The first steps in this art were taken in the early Christian art of painting including those examples found in the catacombs in the 2nd and 3:d centuries. It is an original, highly formalised art influenced by classical Greek art and Egyptian Hellenistic art as well as other art traditions especially Syrian. The amalgamation was organic, and it was influenced by the creators' profound Christian belief. Christian belief was the underlying principle during the development of the Byzantine art of icon painting.

During the reign of Justus the Great who ruled in the Byzantine Empire for forty years (527-565), the Byzantine art of icon painting flourished. It continued to do so until the outburst of the Iconoclasm in 726. That year the emperor Leo III decreed that painting or using icons was to be regarded as idolatry. This official condemnation of the holy icons, known as the Iconoclasm, lead to intense persecution and mass destruction of icons and of those who had painted and/or used them. The Iconoclasm lived on, with a few intermissions until 843. From 843, when the church conquered the iconoclasm, the art of icon painting was revived, this time until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This era was a golden age for the icon. During this second period of Byzantine icon painting, its principal prototypes were shaped and the habit of adorning churches with icons was established.

How did the first icons emerge?

Byzantine art, which for many centuries was misinterpreted and despised in Western Europe and also in the orthodox countries, is now highly valued and appreciated all over the world. Icons emanating from this tradition are in demand everywhere and the orthodox and even many non-orthodox people decorate their churches with wall paintings and icon images after Byzantine model.