See the image at the top of this post. Mosaics are significant not only as art, but as evidence of where and how people lived, worked, and thought. The locations and architectural settings of many mosaics have been recorded over the centuries by archaeologists, helping illuminate their cultural context.
Excavation reports reveal that this mosaic fragment depicting a hare with grapes was originally located in the Bath of Apolausis near Antioch, alongside many other significant mosaics. Because they are built into the foundations of buildings, mosaics are among the best-preserved of all forms of Roman art. Frescoes were knocked down and bronze sculptures melted for reuse, but countryside ruins often sat undisturbed for centuries under layers of soil and vegetation.
This mosaic of the Medusa was found on top of another mosaic of a marine scene. Instead of demoing the original floor, the contractors just put the new one on top. Mosaic Floor with Head of Medusa , about A. This mosaic is on view outside the exhibition galleries, in the lobby of the Getty Villa Auditorium.
The spread of mosaics parallels the vast spread of Roman power, from France to Syria to Tunisia. And like the rest of Roman culture, mosaics in different places reveal a combination of local traditions and Roman influence.
In Italy and Gaul France in the first century A. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees.
Did they design the pattern in wet concrete and then apply the stones, or what? He recommended a timber base and then a two-layer concrete floor on top of which the mosaic cubes should be laid 'by rule and level'. The cubes should then be polished back to create a smooth surface and finally the cracks between the cubes called tesserae filled in with the use of a grout made up of lime and sand. In truth, individual examples vary with greater or lesser preparation, affecting the survival of the floor.
The meaning of this inscription is not at all clear. The illustration shows that it is thought of as a complete word, and that nothing is lost from it. There is no such word in ordinary use in the Latin language, and it becomes a problem as to what its meaning may be. A solution of this would be extremely welcome, as it might throw some light upon the life of the inhabitants of Roman Carthage. Our second pavement Fig.
It is still in a good period, before all imagination had departed and given place to exhibitions of technical skill, but it shows the tendency to turn mosaic from a pictorial to a decorative art. In this specimen the patterns are all purely of a decorative nature; but there is a great deal of boldness of imagination and conception in the patterns employed.
In fact, it is a very beautiful pavement, and though the space is somewhat crowded, the details in no way force themselves upon the critical observer, but blend to make each pattern a perfect whole, harmonious in relation to the other designs around it.
For this reason it seems best to put this mosaic as a work of the end of the first or beginning of the second century A. The other three mosaics that formed Mr. This is the room where are also to be found the sculptures, Roman glass, and reproductions of Cretan and Mycenaean objects. These three mosaics, which, although small, are nevertheless important examples, are said to have come from Rome.
The first one to be considered here is the charming one with the picture of a duck. This is probably the earliest of the five mosaics of the collection, and may date before the Christian era. This exquisite fragment has much in common with some of the mosaics found in the House of the Faun at Pompeii, which is dated in the second century B.
Modern investigations carried on since that time make scholars incline to make this house a first century rather than a second century dwelling; but even then it is early enough to be very important in the history of mosaics.
In one of the wings off the main atrium of this house were found mosaics showing ducks. So it seems safe to say that in this charming fragment we have an example of work of at least the first century B. In this mosaic, as in those in the House of the Faun, we find a most ingenious use of glass in combination with colored stone to show, in this case, the neck and bill of the bird. The naturalism and effectiveness of the composition show a certain amount of Greek influence and put it in about the best period of all.
It, too, is of Opus Vermiculatum. The next one to consider is also of Opus Vermiculatum, but is of considerably later date. It is the one showing two griffins facing an urn Fig. Of one of the griffins, only the head and fore-legs are preserved. Here the mosaic art has become absolutely decorative, and shows it in attempting a more or less pictorial design; for it treats it in a purely decorative manner.
Mosaics at the thresholds of homes decorated in the eastern style were figural and might have only a casual relationship to the main floors of the houses. Some of these reserved finer materials and details for the central portions of a pavement; some of the Eastern motifs used lead strips to enhance the geometric sections.
The best source for information on Roman history and architecture is Vitrivius, who spelled out the steps required to prepare a floor for a mosaic. After all that, the workmen embedded the tesserae into the nucleus layer or perhaps laid a thin layer of lime atop it for that purpose. The tesserae were pressed down into the mortar to set them at a common level and then the surface was ground smooth and polished. In his classic text On Architecture, Vitrivius also identified a variety of methods for mosaic construction.
An opus signinum was a layer of cement or mortar simply embellished with designs picked out in white marble tesserae. An opus sectile was one that included irregularly shaped blocks, to pick out details in figures. Opus tessalatum was one that relied primarily on uniform cubical tessarae, and opus vermiculatum used a line of tiny mm [. Colors in mosaics were made up of stones from nearby or far away quarries ; some mosaics used exotic imported raw materials. Once glass was added to the source material, the colors became enormously varied with an added sparkle and vigor.
Workmen became alchemists, combining chemical additives from plants and minerals in their recipes to create intense or subtle hues, and to make the glass opaque. Motifs in mosaics ran from the simple to quite complex geometric designs with repeating patterns of a variety of rosettes, ribbon twist borders, or precise intricate symbols known as guilloche. Figural scenes were often taken from history, such as tales of gods and heroes at battles in Homer's Odyssey.
There were also figural images from Roman daily life: hunting images or sea images, the latter often found in Roman baths. Some were detailed reproductions of paintings, and some, called labyrinth mosaics, were mazes, graphical representations that viewers might trace. Vitruvius reports that there were specialists: wall mosaicists called musivarii and floor-mosaicists tessellarii.
The primary difference between floor and wall mosaics besides the obvious was the use of glass—glass in floor settings was not practical. It is possible that some mosaics, perhaps most, were created on site, but it is also possible that some of the elaborate ones were created in workshops.
Archaeologists have yet to find evidence for the physical locations of workshops where the art might have been assembled. Scholars such as Sheila Campbell suggest that circumstantial evidence exists for guild-based production.
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