Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7^th – 9^th Century), the revelatory exhibition now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (accompanied by a rich catalogue of the same title), was recently lauded in the New York Times, praised specifically for “offering a soothing picture of artistic continuity.”  The massive undertaking demonstrates the interconnectedness of artistic and cultural traditions in the southern provinces of the Byzantine Empire, as motifs and ideas long common to the area from Syria to Egypt and across North Africa became integral to the traditions of the emerging Islamic world.

Helen Evans, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Michael Jaharis Curator for Byzantine Art, has offered us a guided e-tour of a number of objects from the exhibition and catalogue that do a particularly good job of telling the story of this evolution.

“Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition” is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until July 8, 2012. The accompanying catalogue is available now from Yale University Press.