The dominant figure in the scenes on the arch is the Virgin Mary. But the triumphal arch over the altar of Santa Maria Maggiore offers an even more inspiring example for the future. Such narrative panels will produce rich glories in late medieval frescoes (as for example at Padua). Rectangles above the columns depict scenes from the Old Testament. These spaces are small and far from the ground (for this is essentally a Roman basilica, with two great rows of columns providing the main feature), but the content and treatment of the mosaics prefigures much in later Christian art. It is built in about 435 by pope Sixtus III, who commissions mosaics to decorate spaces on its walls. The regal nature of the image, very different from the good shepherd of the early Christians, prefigures the Christ in Majesty depicted so forcefully in later Byzantine tradition.Įven more significant are the mosaics in a Roman church of the following century, Santa Maria Maggiore. More significant, as a foretaste of things to come, is the mosaic in the apse of Santa Pudenziana.ĭating from about 390 (though much restored), it shows Jesus on a throne. Santa Costanza, built in about AD 350 as the tomb for a daughter of Constantine, has lively mosaics on pagan themes decorating its vault. Two of the earliest examples are in Rome. The turning point for mosaic, as an art form, is the use of it by Christians to decorate the walls of churches rather than the floor. The Christian tradition: from the 4th century AD It begins the great tradition of Christian mosaic. ![]() He commissions for the floor of his church a splendid mosaic depicting all the scenes in the dramatic story of Jonah and the whale. By that time the bishop of Aquileia in northern Italy is adapting this Roman art form to his own polemical purposes. The mosaics of Piazza Armerina are of the early 4th century. Of their many lively scenes none has given more delight than the group of bikini-clad maidens playing a musical game with a ball. Originally they covered some 4200 square yards. ![]() The great Roman villa near Piazza Armerina in Sicily, built in about AD 300, has mosaic floors which were probably laid by craftsmen from north Africa. The images are copied from existing patterns rather than being original works of art, but the results are often impressive - particularly in several north African villas, and in one spectacular example in Sicily. Many of the views are charming scenes of life in and around a villa. They are often laid by local craftsmen (invariably the tesserae are from materials of the surrounding district). Soon, throughout the empire, rich villas have impressive mosaic floors. Mosaic spreads through the Hellenistic world, and is brought by Greek craftsmen to Italy - as revealed in the amazing examples from Pompeii (for example, the dramatic image of Alexander and Darius in battle). As the tesserae become brighter and smaller, there is little limit to the pictorial effects which can be achieved. ![]() These are the two varieties of small cube, known as tesserae, which become the basic ingredients of all subsequent mosaic. They use small cubes cut from stone, to give a greater range of colour, and sometimes they add fragments of coloured glass. A few stones of different colours are included to improve the effect, but they are used complete - showing a rounded surface.ĭuring the next century Greek mosaicists become more ambitious. The mosaicists of Olynthus use natural pebbles, limited mainly to black for the background and white for the figures. Simpler versions of patterned floors are known from several hundred years earlier in Crete and in mainland Greece, but the Olynthus designs are much more advanced - constituting virtually a new art form. Many of the houses in Olynthus have floors of this kind. Well-to-do Greeks of the 4th century have their floors covered in elaborate mosaics, consisting of pictorial scenes set within a succession of borders, much like the design of a carpet. The excavation reveals a fact previously unknown. Any survivors abandon the town, which is forgotten until it is excavated in the 1920s. In 348 BC Philip of Macedon attacks and destroys Olynthus, whose inhabitants have been unwise enough to rebel against him.
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