Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

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These mosaics in Hagia Sophia's apse (east end) are the oldest of the surviving mosaics in Hagia Sophia. On the left, in the main part of the apse is an enthroned Virgin and Child. On the right is the Archangel Gabriel.

The unveiling of these new mosaics on Easter Sunday 867 under Emperor Basil I was a triumphal event celebrating victory over the iconoclasts, who had opposed figurative religious imagery and destroyed many works of art in the process. The mosaic of the Virgin replaced an early cross mosaic from the Iconoclast period.

According to the 13th-century Russian pilgrim Antony of Novgorod, an oral tradition attributed this fine mosaic to the celebrated painter Lazarus, whose hands had been burned because he insisted on painting icons in the time of the iconoclast Emperor Theophilus.

The Archangel Gabriel was part of a pair with a mosaic of Archangel Michael on the other side of the apse, little of which survives. Together the angels stood as protectors of the Virgin and Child.