Viktor Nikitich Lazarev was one of the founders of the Russian school of art history, and a major figure in the study of Byzantine and early Russian art. Immensely productive, he combined teaching, museum work and scholarship throughout a long and eventful life.

His studies on Byzantine painting, and its links with the art of his native Russia, were of great importance in helping to clarify the stylistic development of Byzantine painting, and in drawing attention to the Byzantine roots of medieval Italian painting. This volume contains all of Professor Lazarev's papers on Byzantine painting, published between 1925 and 1964. Six of the papers were originally published in Russian, and are translated into English here for the first time. There is a comprehensive index to the volume.