This survey and analysis of Byzantine art and architecture traces the influences, features, nature and variants of the visual expression of this period, with sections on religious and civic architecture, mosaics, mural painting, sculpture, icons and manuscript illumination. It includes discussion of artistic trends and developments in Constantinople, in various parts of the Byzantine Empire and Exarchate of Ravenna, including Sicily, Bulgaria, Serbia, Cappadocia, Armenia and Georgia, and examinations of the further-reaching influences of Byzantine art in Europe, as this spread out both geographically, through the continuation of the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe, and temporally, in later artistic developments up to and including the abstract movements of the twentieth century.