This catalogue ties in with the exhibition of the same name, which will run from November 2000 to Septemper 2001, and marks the opening of the Hermitage Rooms at Somerset House, London. Catherine the Great of Russia was one of the greatest and most astute art collectors of all time.

Dating back to 324 AD, when a community of monks requested a chapel to be built on the spot where they believed the Burning Bush had stood, the monastery of St. Catherine has remained an oasis of peace for centuries. Today, it is a place of international pilgrimage, housing the most extensive collection of Greek Orthodox icons in the world. Granted unprecedented access to this holy site, photographer Araldo De Luca and author Corinna Rossi take readers inside the walls of this sacred place, revealing its peerless artistic, historical, and religious legacy through superb photographs and an authoritative text that incorporates the most recent research and discoveries. Presented in a handsome slipcase and featuring a preface by Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, this is a book to be cherished by art lovers and anyone interested in our historical and religious heritage.

Dr. Fiona Thornton has committed her life to studying and trying to protect the elephants of Kenya. Rogan McCullough, a wealthy entrepreneur, offers Fiona generous financial support if she will allow him to bring tourists to her camp to see the elephants. Fiona balks at the idea, but when poachers threaten the beloved herd, she and Rogan must work together to protect them. In the process, both reach new depths of faith and discover an unforeseen love for each other.

The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai has been characterized by scholars as the most celebrated of the world's monasteries, while in the conscience of the Orthodox peoples it was and remains the most revered and longed-for focus of pilgrimage after the Holy Places. In the course of the Monastery's fifteen centuries of uninterrupted life, and despite the great difficulties faced in the midst of alien peoples, not only has St. Catherine's managed to maintain the Orthodox faith intact and provide the Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate with pre-eminent figures of Asceticism, but it also secured special privileges from the Prophet Mohammed and, at a later date, from popes of Rome and leaders of both the East and West. The Monastery thus proved itself a great spiritual hearth of Hellenism, rendering the most distinguished service to monasticism, Orthodoxy, the Church and the Greek people. At the same time, the Monastery acquired international fame as a unique centre of Byzantine icon painting. Here the specialist may study the uninterrupted development of this art from the 6th century up till the present day. Furthermore, the Monastery also developed its own Sinaitic school of icon painting with its own stylistic techniques and 'Sinaitic' subject matter. Examples of this school's work are encountered not only in icons but also in illuminated manuscripts of the calligraphic and chrysographic workshop of the Monastery's world-famous Library. The Monastery of Sinai, moreover, surrounded as it is by the fortification walls built by its founder, the Emperor Justinian, and isolated in the inhospitable desert, was through the centuries a secure haven for invaluable works of art sent from all corners of the Earth as devout offerings of the faithful. Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and Modern Greek works representing all types of ecclesiastical art make up the artistic treasures of the Monastery.

Specially commissioned photographs by Marc Walter and fascinating archive images capture a bygone age of Romanov splendor that will captivate art lovers and historians alike

Contains excellent notes on the 100 works shown in color.