Museum of Byzantine Culture

The collection of religious engravings of the Museum of Byzantine Culture is among the most significant collections of the kind on an international level. It contains 239 engravings and 10 wooden and copper engraving plates. The 232 engravings and the 8 plates come from the personal collection of Dori Papastratou. The collection was a donation of the collector herself that was completed by her daughters Marina and Daphne in 1995.

The collection of the Museum contains religious engravings, which are also called paper icons. These represent an almost unknown aspect of the Orthodox iconography, as they have a parallel development with the wall-paintings and the portable icons. Initially, paper icons were imported by the metropolitan centers of Europe (Venice, Vienna etc). The starting point of the Orthodox print-making is placed in 17th century; at first, wood-cuts were produced, later on, from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, etchings and in the end lithographs.