New yorkers are assaulted by thousands of images every day. In recent days, scenes from the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ ― all of them images designed to make people think harder about the relationship between spiritual authority and earthly power-have had an unaccustomed impact. Thus far, at least, we might be speaking of Mel Gibson's blockbuster film, "The Passion of The Christ"-or of another, rather more rarefied event that will nonetheless make a deep impression on American consumers of high culture: the opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of a wonderfully rich selection of the artistic and spiritual achievements of late Christian Byzantium, and its imitators in the Slavic world.
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