Mosaic

• 1. Introduction

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  Mosaic is the art of creating images and patterns from small pieces of colored stone, glass, or ceramic, bound together with plaster or mortar to cover a surface. In a temple at Abra in Mesopotamia, someone pressed pieces of colored stone, shells, and ivory into a surface sometime in the second half of the third millennium BC. That act of assembly produced the earliest known mosaics made of mixed materials. What began as decorated floors in ancient Mesopotamia would travel across continents, into the grandest churches of Rome and Byzantium, across the synagogues of Galilee, and into the palaces of Norman Sicily. The questions worth following are: why did this painstaking technique become the preferred art form of entire civilizations? What did it mean that a picture made of tiny cubes lasted longer than any painting? And why did mosaic keep being rediscovered, abandoned, and reclaimed again and again over five thousand years?

• 2. Stone, Glass, and Tesserae

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  Traditional mosaics are built from small cubes of stone or hand-made glass enamel in different colors, known as tesserae. The earliest examples were made of natural pebbles, originally used to reinforce floors. Excavations at Susa and Chogha Zanbil revealed what appear to be the first glazed tiles, dating from around 1500 BC. The two principal techniques developed in the Greco-Roman world took different approaches to the same material. Opus vermiculatum used tiny tesserae, typically cubes of four millimeters or less, produced in workshops as small panels that were then transported to their final location. The tiny cubes allowed fine detail that approached the illusionism of painting. The normal approach, opus tessellatum, used larger pieces laid directly on site. In Rome, artists working for Nero used mosaics to cover walls and ceilings of the Domus Aurea, built in 64 AD. There was also a distinct Italian style using black figures on a white background, which was almost certainly less expensive than fully colored work. Modern practitioners work with a far wider range of materials including shells, beads, bottle caps, coins, gears, and pieces of costume jewelry.

• 3. Greece, Rome, and the Great Floors

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  Pebble mosaics found at Tiryns in Mycenaean Greece are among the earliest examples of the form in Europe. Mosaics of the 4th century BC appear in the Macedonian palace-city of Aegae. From that same century, a mosaic known as the Beauty of Durrës was discovered in Durrës, Albania in 1916, representing an early figural example from the Greek world. Pliny the Elder named the artist Sosus of Pergamon, describing his compositions of food left on a floor after a feast and of doves drinking from a bowl. Both subjects were widely imitated. Most recorded names of Roman mosaic workers are Greek, which suggests that Greek craftsmen dominated high-quality work across the empire; most ordinary workers were probably enslaved people. Splendid mosaic floors survive in Roman villas across North Africa, with an extensive collection held in the Bardo Museum in Tunis. The Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina in Sicily preserves the largest collection of late Roman mosaics still in their original location, protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The villa, probably owned by Emperor Maximian, was built largely in the early 4th century. Its most famous images include the Circus Scene, the 64-meter Great Hunting Scene, and the Bikini Girls, showing women engaged in sporting activities in garments resembling 20th-century bikinis. In 1913, the Zliten mosaic, famous for its scenes of gladiatorial contests, was discovered in the Libyan town of Zliten. In 2000, archaeologists working at Leptis Magna uncovered a 30-foot length of five mosaics from the 1st or 2nd century AD. One of those panels, showing a gladiator resting and staring at a slain opponent, has been described by scholars as a masterpiece comparable in quality with the Alexander Mosaic in Pompeii.

• 4. The Christian Revolution

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  With the construction of Christian basilicas in the late 4th century, mosaic migrated from floors to walls and ceilings. Two of the earliest Christian mosaics, at Santa Costanza and Santa Pudenziana in Rome, both date from the 4th century and survive today. The winemaking putti in the ambulatory of Santa Costanza deliberately echo the feast of Bacchus, which was considered a symbol of transformation and therefore appropriate for a mausoleum. The original function of that building matters: these pagan motifs were not accidents but choices. Ravenna emerged as the center of late Roman mosaic art in the 5th century. The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia was decorated between 425 and 430 with mosaics on a blue background, its central vault bearing a golden cross in a starry sky. Galla Placidia also erected the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, fulfilling a vow she made after escaping a storm at sea in 425 during the voyage from Constantinople to Ravenna. Those mosaics depicted the storm itself, along with portraits of the imperial family and Bishop Peter Chrysologus. They were almost entirely destroyed in 1747. After Ravenna came under Byzantine control in 539, mosaic production reached its highest expression in the second half of the 6th century. The mosaic depicting Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora in the Basilica of San Vitale was made shortly after that conquest, and the mosaics of Sant'Apollinare in Classe were completed around 549. One anti-Arian composition in San Michele in Affricisco, executed between 545 and 547, was later largely destroyed; its remains are now in Berlin.

• 5. Byzantium at Its Height

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  Mosaics were more central to Byzantine culture than to that of Western Europe. Church interiors were generally covered in golden mosaics, and the art form flourished in the Byzantine Empire from the 6th to the 15th centuries. A portrait of a moustached man, possibly a Gothic chieftain, survives from a floor mosaic of Justinian's Great Palace in Constantinople and is considered the most important surviving mosaic of that reign. The period called the Macedonian Renaissance, spanning 867 to 1056, produced what many scholars regard as the finest examples. At the Hosios Loukas Monastery, the narthex holds the Crucifixion, the Pantokrator, and the Anastasis above the doors; all were executed before 1048. The Nea Moni Monastery on Chios was established by Constantine Monomachos between 1043 and 1056 and received mosaic decoration of exceptional quality. The dome mosaic showing the nine orders of the angels was destroyed in 1822, but other panels survived. The post-Iconoclastic period brought an interesting challenge to the mosaic tradition: during the Iconoclastic era, figural mosaics had been condemned as idolatry, and churches were decorated instead with a plain gold background and a single cross in the apse. The Hagia Irene in Constantinople received such treatment after 740. When the Iconodules prevailed, a Theotokos image replaced those crosses in the apses of the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki and the Church of the Dormition in Nicaea; the Dormition church was totally destroyed in 1922. At the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, a mosaic panel added between 1042 and 1055 shows Christ with Emperor Constantine Monomachos and Empress Zoe. The emperor presents a bulging money sack to Christ as a donation. Perhaps the most famous Byzantine mosaic in Constantinople is the Deesis on the south gallery of the Hagia Sophia, created after Michael VIII Palaiologos reconquered the city in 1261. Its figures stand two and a half times lifesize. The greatest mosaic cycle of the Palaeologan period decorated the Chora Church in Constantinople, executed around 1320 by the command of Theodore Metochites. The most important panel shows Metochites himself wearing a large turban, offering the model of the church to Christ.

• 6. Islam, Sicily, and Jerusalem

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  Figurative mosaic, largely without human figures, appeared on religious buildings and palaces in early Islamic art. Islam's first great religious building, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, received mosaic decoration, as did the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Such mosaics fell out of favor in the Islamic world after the 8th century, though geometric mosaic techniques such as zellij remained popular in many regions. In Sicily, the Norman kings of the 12th century adopted the Byzantine tradition to enhance the authority of their relatively new dynasty. Greek masters working in Sicily developed a style that blended Byzantine, Western European, and Islamic tendencies. The Monreale mosaics constitute the largest decoration of this kind in Italy, covering 0.75 hectares with at least 100 million glass and stone tesserae. That enormous program was executed between 1176 and 1186 under the order of King William II of Sicily. The Cappella Palatina in Palermo, begun in the 1140s, shows the blending of traditions directly. Its dome and eastern end carry typical Byzantine mosaics with Greek inscriptions, while the narrative scenes of the nave resemble those of Roman basilicas with Latin inscriptions. A mosaic in the Martorana church depicts Roger II of Sicily dressed in Byzantine imperial robes, receiving his crown from Christ. The program of redecoration of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was completed in 1169 as a collaboration between the Byzantine emperor, the king of Jerusalem, and the Latin Church. Jerusalem itself once had the highest concentration of mosaic-covered churches in the world, but few survived the waves of destruction that followed. An Armenian mosaic discovered in 1894 on the Street of the Prophets shows a vine with peacocks, ducks, storks, pigeons, an eagle, a partridge, and a parrot in a cage. Its inscription reads: "For the memory and salvation of all those Armenians whose name the Lord knows."

• 7. Synagogues and Jewish Mosaic

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  Under Roman and Byzantine influence, Jewish communities decorated their synagogues with classical floor mosaics. Many examples were discovered in Galilee and the Judean Desert. A 6th-century synagogue uncovered in Sepphoris, an important center of Jewish culture between the 3rd and 7th centuries, has a mosaic floor combining a zodiac wheel with biblical scenes including the binding of Isaac, and traditional rituals including a burnt sacrifice. In the center of that zodiac, the god Helios sits in his sun chariot, with each zodiac sign matched to a Jewish month. The Beit Alfa synagogue, built during the reign of Justin I between 518 and 527, is regarded as one of the most important mosaics discovered in Israel. Its three panels depict the Holy Ark, the zodiac, and the sacrifice of Isaac. In the ancient resort town of Hammat Tiberias, a 4th-century zodiac mosaic shows the sun god Helios holding the celestial sphere and a whip; nine of the twelve signs of the zodiac survive intact. In 1966, remains of a synagogue were found in the ancient harbor area of Byzantine Gaza. Its mosaic floor depicts King David as Orpheus, identified by his name in Hebrew letters. Nearby are lion cubs, a giraffe, and a snake listening to him play a lyre. The floor was laid in 508-509. It closely resembles the floor of the synagogue at Maon, which suggests the same artist probably worked at both sites.

• 8. Venice, Revival, and Endurance

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  In Venice, mosaic never went out of fashion during the Middle Ages. The whole interior of St. Mark's Basilica is clad with elaborate golden mosaics. The oldest scenes were made by Greek masters in the late 11th century, though the majority of the work was produced by local artists from the 12th to 13th centuries. The decoration was not completed until the 16th century. One hundred and ten scenes in the atrium of St. Mark's were based directly on the miniatures of the Cotton Genesis, a Byzantine manuscript brought to Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204; those mosaics were executed in the 1220s. During the papacy of Clement VIII, between 1592 and 1605, the Congregazione della Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro was established to oversee the decorations of the newly built St. Peter's Basilica. The decision to use mosaic rather than fresco there rested on several considerations: the old St. Peter's had been decorated with mosaic, the cavernous building had high walls and few windows where mosaics reflected more light, and mosaics had greater longevity than either frescoes or canvases. The mosaics of St. Peter's drew on designs by artists including Ciro Ferri, Guido Reni, and Domenichino. Many different craftsmen contributed to the 17th- and 18th-century work there, including Giovanni Battista Calandra, Fabio Cristofari who died in 1689, and Pietro Paolo Cristofari who died in 1743. In the dome of the Baptistery in Florence, a mosaic of the Last Judgement includes some of the earliest panels, made by many Venetian craftsmen starting in 1225. In Ravello, mosaic ambos in local churches show that the technique was still widespread in southern Italy during the 11th to 13th centuries. Today artists and craftspeople around the world continue to work with mosaic, using materials from shells and beads to gears and coins alongside the traditional glass and stone.