The gods and goddesses are busy people, so they have a lot of matters to attend to, so they only turn up from time to time.

Hello, I'm Neil McGregor, and in this series of podcasts, I'm looking at objects to see how shared beliefs have helped shape societies.

Now we're focusing on images.

In this episode, we're looking at images that make communities.

This is the BBC.

Visit any gallery of Western European art,

and you'll find works chosen for technical excellence or bold innovation.

Art which reveals not just great manual skill,

but a new way of seeing and thinking the world.

The privilege above all the idea of a unique work of art,

created by a great genius.

But the images I want to look at in this programme,

significant to millions,

exist entirely outside these familiar Western European categories.

More than the aesthetic quality of their execution,

the handling of light and shade and so on,

what matters about these images is how they were made

and how they are then used and venerated, preserved or even destroyed.

Two Russian icons here at the British Museum could, I think, in a narrowly aesthetic sense,

be quite safely described as undistinguished. They're small in scale and probably made to be used at home. And there's nothing

in the handling of the paint to excite our attention, far less our admiration. In both these

icons, Mary holds her infant son on her left arm and bends her head gently towards him.

...