[1] The crusader Kingdom of Cyprus outlived the Fall of Constantinople by a generation; the subsequent sale of the island to Venice led to a brief period of Italo-Byzantine painting.
[1] Subject to the layout of each church, the iconographic schema typically accords with the classic Byzantine tripartition, evident also in Byzantine mosaic decoration, the three zones comprising: (1) the dome and conch of the apse; (2) the pendentives, squinches and upper vaults; and (3) the lower, secondary vaults and walls.
[2][5] Since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, a number of churches in the north have been looted and their wall paintings detached to supply the international antiquities trade.
[6][7] Among them is the Church of St. Evphemianos in Lysi: the thirteenth-century Christ Pantocrator mural and surrounding angels were detached, leaving their feet behind; the paintings were then acquired for the Menil Collection and displayed at the Byzantine Fresco Chapel in Houston, Texas before their repatriation to the south in 2012.
[7][8][9] Meanwhile, many churches in the south been the subject of conservation interventions, conducted by the Department of Antiquities, Dumbarton Oaks and the Courtauld Institute of Art, aimed at reconciling the competing demands of stability, legibility and authenticity within the framework of ongoing devotional practice.