Excavating Empire: Gold, Silver and Bronze in Byzantium

Nice little exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art looking at the history of Byzantium through its coins and seals.

There was a good timeline of the empire in coins with the real coins and enlarged pictures of them so you could see the detail. It showed how depictions of the emperors moved from being in military dress to civilian. It also showed how sometimes emperors were shown with their successors  or empress regents with their sons.

The show looked at the iconography on the coins showing how Christianity started to be seen in the images however pagan imagery carried on alongside it for a long time. It also looked at how the coins were made moving from dies in the early years to casting later on and the show included some glass weights used to check the metal content of the coinage.

The show included seals made of lead rather than wax which were used to authentic official documents.

Closes on 18 March 2018

 

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