First published in 1930, this book deals with Byzantine art, not as an isolated province, but as one intimately connected with the subsequent history of European painting. After a summary of the whole question in its relation to modern art, the second chapter opens with a novel analysis of the iconoclast controversy, and shows how it was only by this movement that Hellenistic naturalism was finally vanquished and the seed of interpretational art planted in Europe in its stead.