This mosaic is all about luck and covering one’s bases, and if you allow yourself a little unscholarly, unprovable cross-millennia Mediterranean flights of fancy perhaps some fun superstitious syncretism. It’s a biggish pavement, from a domestic context – the vestibule of a house to be precise – in ancient Antioch (ancient Syria, present-day Turkey) and
Painting (as it were) with minute stone tesserae, this mosaicist really nailed the look of a somewhat guilty dog: a slightly inquisitive hunch, all perked ears and muzzle aquiver, with that plaintive, ascertaining gaze…. This most excellent mosaic was found in a private home in Alexandria – one of the pivotal cultural centers in the
Bedecked in pearls, jewels, gold and purple cloth, and with those remarkable eyes (beneath an imposing unibrow and above a decidedly humorless face), this is the empress Theodora: formidable and radiant at the church of San Vitale in Ravenna in the 6th century AD. It’s a powerful depiction and a masterful mosaic. But it is
When of the highest quality, mosaics are truly painting with stone – an appealing notion. The height of this art (opus vermiculatum) occurred during the Hellenistic period, specifically in Pergamon, where the mosaicist Sosus (the only one named from antiquity) carried out commissions for the royal palaces. One of his masterpieces was the “unswept room”
“Like lentils rolling in flour!” – how the excavator of the famous pebble mosaics at Pella described their dire state of conservation upon their discovery in the late 1950’s. A vivid image, and an indication of the challenging restoration and consolidation in store for them. Pella was the traditional capital of ancient Macedonia, and the
The “Unswept Room” (‘asarotos oikos’ in Greek), was the brainchild of Sosos, the best known mosaicist from the ancient world. It’s a weird and wonderful idea: the intricate tessellated mosaic showed the detritus that might be left behind after a raucous aristocratic dinner party: crustacean shells, olives, chicken bones, fruits, leaves, nut shells, and even