A new artistic centre was created in the eastern Mediterranean with the foundation in the early 4th century ad of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) on the site of Byzantium. The term Byzantine is normally used to identify the art of this city and of the Orthodox Christian empire that was controlled from it and that survived from 330 until its capture in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks. From the reign of Justinian I (527–565) there were relatively clear political and ecclesiastical differences between the Byzantine world and the West, and the term Byzantine art from this period onward broadly reflects these ...(100 of 73439 words)