P.S.

124 6-215 Mosaic The meaning of Mosaics:

Gurkirt Singh 03/01/14

Mosaics are the art of creating images with an amount of small pieces of colored glass, stones, or other materials. It is a technique of decorative art and interior decoration. Most mosaics are made of small, flat, roughly square, pieces of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae but most mosaics, especially floor mosaics, may also be made of small rounded pieces of stone, and can be called pebble mosaics. History of Mosaics: The earliest known examples of mosaics made of different materials were found at a temple building in Abra, Mesopotamia, and are dated to the second half of 3rd millennium BC. They consist of pieces of colored stones, shells and ivory. Excavations at Susa and Chogha Zanbilshow evidence of the first glazed tiles, dating from around 1500 BC.] However, mosaic patterns were not used until the times of Sassanid Empire and Roman influence. Greek and Roman Mosaics: Bronze age pebble mosaics have been found at Tiryns and mosaics of the 4th century BC are found in the Macedonian palace-city of Aegae, and the 4th-century BC mosaic of The Beauty of Durrs discovered in Durrs, Albania in 1916, is an early figural example; the Greek figural style was mostly formed in the 3rd century BC. Mythological subjects, or scenes of hunting or other pursuits of the wealthy, were popular as the centerpieces of a larger geometric design, with strongly emphasized borders.[2] Pliny the Elder mentions the artist Seuss of Pergamonby name, describing his mosaics of the food left on a floor after a feast and of a group of doves drinking from a bowl. Both of these themes were widely copied.[4] Greek figural mosaics could have been copied or adapted paintings, a far more prestigious art form, and the style was enthusiastically adopted by the Romans so that large floor mosaics enriched the floors

of Hellenistic villas and Roman dwellings from Britain to Dura-Europes. Most recorded names of Roman mosaic workers are Greek, suggesting they dominated high quality work across the empire; no doubt most ordinary craftsmen were slaves. Splendid mosaic floors are found in Roman villas across North Africa, in places such as Carthage, and can still be seen in the extensive collection in Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia. There were two main techniques in Greco-Roman mosaic: opus vermiculate used tiny tesserae, typically cubes of 4 millimeters or less, and was produced in workshops in relatively small panels which were transported to the site glued to some temporary support. The tiny tesserae allowed very fine detail, and an approach to the illusionism of painting. Often small panels called emblematic were inserted into walls or as the highlights of larger floor-mosaics in coarser work. The normal technique was opus tessellate, using larger tesserae, which was laid on site. There was a distinct native Italian style using black on a white background, which was no doubt cheaper than fully coloured work (see the dog at the upper left). In Rome, Nero and his architects used mosaics to cover some surfaces of walls and ceilings in the Domus Area, built 64 AD, and wall mosaics are also found at Pompeii and neighboring sites. However it seems that it was not until the Christian era that figural wall mosaics became a major form of artistic expression. The Roman church of Santa Costanzo, which served as a mausoleum for one or more of the Imperial family, has both religious mosaic and decorative secular ceiling mosaics on a round vault, which probably represent the style of contemporary palace decoration. The mosaics of the Villa Roman del Casals near Piazza Armenian in Sicily are the largest collection of late Roman mosaics in situ in the world, and are protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The large villa rustic, which was probably owned by Emperor Miamian, was built largely in the early 4th century. The mosaics were covered and protected for 700 years by a landslide that occurred in the 12th Century. The most important pieces are the Circus Scene, the 64m long Great Hunting Scene, the Little Hunt, the Labors of Hercules and the famous Bikini Girls, showing women undertaking a range of sporting activities in garments that resemble 20th Century bikinis. The peristyle, the imperial apartments and the thermal were also decorated with ornamental and mythological mosaics. Other important examples of Roman mosaic art in Sicily were unearthed on the Piazza Vitoria in Palermo where two houses

were discovered. The most important scenes there depicted Orpheus, Alexander the Great's Hunt and the Four Seasons In 1913 the Zliten mosaic, a Roman mosaic famous for its many scenes from gladiatorial contests, hunting and everyday life, was discovered in the Libyan town of Zliten. In 2000 archaeologists working in Leptis Magna, Libya, uncovered a 30 ft. length of five colorful mosaics created during the 1st or 2nd century AD. The mosaics show a warrior in combat with a deer, four young men wrestling a wild bull to the ground, and a gladiator resting in a state of fatigue, staring at his slain opponent. The mosaics decorated the walls of a cold plunge pool in a bath house within a Roman villa. The gladiator mosaic is noted by scholars as one of the finest examples of mosaic art ever seen a masterpiece comparable in quality with the Alexander Mosaic in Pompeii. A specific genre of Roman mosaic obtained the name asaroton (Greek upswept floor). It represented optical illusion of the feast leftovers on the floor of reach houses.