guardians of the last two hundred years of Byzantium , and shaped the last renaissance of its art .
The Hellenic World
Present-day Greece is a relatively small country at the southern edge of the Balkan Peninsula . The modern Greek State arose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire , propelled by the momentous events and liberation movements that took place in the Americas and Europe . At the end of the 18th century , many ethnic groups populated the Ottoman Empire , and the Greek population was a large part of the crumbling realm .
Greek-speaking populations once constituted a large part of the Ottoman Empire , and Greeks often occupied privileged civic administrative positions . They moved freely to engage in commerce , finance , and maritime trading , and they contributed substantially to the cultural life of the Empire .
Hellenic peoples were found not only in the places which became the Greece we know today , but also in Venice , Asia Minor ( today ’ s Turkey ), Smyrna , Cappadocia , the Near East , Lebanon , Syria , the Holy Land , Egypt , many Balkan countries , the Black Sea , Trebizond and adjoining territories , and as far north as Georgia and Ukraine . But most importantly , the cosmopolitan city of Constantinople had a Greek population that far surpassed any other ethnic group . This balance of minority populations persisted into the beginning of the 20th century , when the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire led to the expulsion of many minority populations , and the city began to acquire a more monolithically Turkish-speaking character .
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its ensuing fragmentation , which triggered the creation of many nations in the Balkans , and Turkey itself , also precipitated the exodus of Greeks who were forcibly uprooted . As the ancient Greek communities were abandoned , their populations became refugees seeking shelter in Greece with little but their most precious possessions .
The Imperial City of Constantinople , c . 1500 CE .
These refugees arrived in their new homeland bringing with them not gold coins , not precious diamonds or metals , or what ordinarily would be considered objects of great value , but the things most precious to them : the icons from their now destroyed churches , along with other liturgical implements . These objects were what made them “ Greek ,” and these were their link to their new home country . But more than anything , their Orthodox faith and their ancient culture were proof of their being Greek , an identity they shared with the other , now liberated , Greeks who lived in the newly constituted country , Greece itself . Their icons were the most visible symbol of that faith .
The Argie & Emmanuel Tiliakos Collection of Greek Icons 15