ABSTRACT
The mounting of the exhibition Byzantium 330-1453 at the Royal Academy was an occasion for lively discussions of the modern ‘blockbuster’, a term which tends to attach itself to exhibitions of large scope with armies of visitors. We nevertheless lack any clear definition of the word. History may help. That is, by examining predecessors to the blockbuster age of the latter half of the twentieth century, we can flesh out a part of the context for modern exhibitions. I propose, in the pages that follow, to look at just two salient episodes of the display of Byzantine art, what I call two scenes from the prehistory of the Byzantine blockbuster: first, the display of Byzantine artworks in medieval churches in the west; and second the great exhibition of Byzantine art mounted at the Greek Abbey of Grottaferrata, near Rome, in 1904.
