Musīvum Opus
Mosaic. The term mosaic is usually derived from a post-classical word
musivum (
μουσεῖον), occurring in Spartianus
(
Vit. Pescenn. 6,
pictum de musivo), and St. Augustine
(
De Civ. Dei, xvi. 8,
hominum genera musivo picta). It is
the art of arranging small cubes or
tesserae of marble, coloured stone,
terra-cotta, glass, or some other artificial substance, so as to produce an ornamental pattern
or picture, and to provide a durable form of decoration for walls and pavements. The
only mosaic hitherto found in Greece Proper is that discovered in 1829, in the floor of the
east portico of the temple of Zeus, at Olympia, possibly little later than the first half of
the fourth century B.C. It is formed of rough round pebbles of various colours from the bed of
the Alpheus, and it represents Tritons of graceful design surrounded by a tasteful border of
palmettes and meandering lines.
The earliest mosaics mentioned in literature are those made for the ship of Hiero II., about
the middle of the third century, with scenes from the
Iliad, which took 300
skilled workmen a whole year to execute (Athenaeus, 206 d). To the
same age belongs the only artist in mosaic whose name is recorded in literature, Sosus of
Pergamun, famous as the inventor of a kind of mosaic called the
ἀσάρωτον (the “unswept” floor), in which the floor of a room
is inlaid with representations of fruits, fishes, and fragments of food that have fallen from
the table (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxvi. 184;
cf. Statius,
Silvae i. 3, 36). Mosaics of this type have been found not only at
Pompeii, but also at Aquileia and in Algiers (see p. 825). According to Pliny , the original
design by Sosus included a remarkable representation of a dove drinking and casting the shadow
of its head on the water beneath, while several other doves were to be seen sunning themselves
on the rim of the bowl. The best-known copy of this is that called “The Capitoline
Doves,” found at Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli. It is entirely composed of cubes of
marble, without any admixture of coloured glass.
The art of reproducing paintings in mosaic probably originated in Egypt, and thence found
its
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The Capitoline Doves. (Rome, Capitoline Museum.)
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way to Greece and Italy. It is doubtless connected in its origin with the brick-work
and tiling of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In fact, just as wallpaintings were first suggested by
tapestries, so mosaic work is a natural development from carpets. All these arts, indeed, were
closely related, and the subjects of paintings are also used by the makers of mosaic. One of
the finest pieces of mosaic at Pompeii, signed by Dioscorides of Samos, reproduces a
wall-painting found in the same city. The largest mosaic picture of Roman workmanship is that
executed for the temple of Fortune at Praenesté, restored by
Sulla (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxvi. 189). This
was discovered in 1640, and is generally supposed to represent a popular
fête on the occasion of an inundation of the Nile. It probably belongs to
the time of Hadrian.
Among the mosaics of Pompeii the most famous is that identified as the “Battle of
Issus,” possibly a copy of the painting of the same subject by a female artist,
Helena, “daughter of Timon the Egyptian,” which was placed in the Temple
of Peace in the time of Vespasian (Photius,
Bibl. p. 482). It represents the
critical moment when Alexander is charging, bare-headed, in the thick of the fray, and has
just transfixed with his lance one of the leaders of the Persians; while Darius, with his
lofty tiara and red chlamys, is extending his right hand in an attitude of alarm and despair.
In the mosaic itself the lower border represents a river, apparently the Nile, with a
crocodile, hippopotamus, ichneumon, ibis, etc., thus confirming the con
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Threshold in Mosaic. (Pompeii.)
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jecture as to the Egyptian origin of the design. See illustrations, pp. 296 and 890.
Mosaics bearing the artist's name are seldom found. The two finest of this class are those
from Pompeii inscribed with the name of Dioscorides of Samos. One of these represents four
masked figures playing on various instruments. The work is composed of very small pieces of
glass, of the most beautiful colours and in various shades. (See Dyer's
Pompeii, p. 276). Another of similar construction portrays a rehearsal for a
satyric drama. The ground is black, the drapery mainly white, but the robe of the flute-player
is bordered with purple, the lips are a bright red, and the flutes and ornaments coloured like
gold. The finest mosaic of the early part of the second century A.D. is the highly pictorial
centaur-mosaic now at Berlin, found at the Villa of Hadrian (Baumeister's
Denkmäler, fig. 941). The most celebrated works of a later date
include that in the Thermae of Caracalla, with numerous gladiatorial figures of colossal size
and ungraceful drawing (ib. fig. 174); and that of the Roman villa at Nennig, near
Trèves. The dimensions of the latter are fifty feet by thirtythree, and the design
includes several groups of figures enclosed in a square or hexagonal framework of tessellated
marble
(ib. figs. 1001-2343). Among the mosaics in the British Museum are an
Amphitrité and Tritons, with Dionysus, Meleager, and Atalanta, all from
Halicarnassus, and of Roman times, since figures of Dido and Aeneas were found in the same
villa (Newton's
Travels and Discoveries, ii. 76). Among mosaics still preserved
in England may be mentioned those at Woodchester, Bignor, and Brading.
Mosaic pavements are known by different names descriptive of certain varieties of structure.
1.
A
pavimentum sectile is composed of thin plates of coloured marble of
various sizes, cut (
secta) into slices of regular form and arranged in
an ornamental geometrical pattern including triangles, hexagons, etc. (
Vit. vii. 1, 3, 4;
Caes. 46 fin.).
2.
The epithet
tessellatum describes a pavement of the same general kind,
but made up of regular square dies (
tesserae, tessellae, tesserulae),
forming rectangular designs.
3.
Vermiculatum is applied to a design formed of small pieces of marble in
various colours, arranged so as to imitate the object represented with a high degree of
pictorial effect. The dies are of different shapes, so as to allow of their following the
wavy contours of the outline of the object. The name owes its origin to the fact that the
general effect of such an arrangement resembles the contortions of a cluster of worms (
vermes). (Cf. Pliny,
H. N. xxxv. 2; and Lucilius, quoted in Cicero's
Orator,
149.)
4.
The term
lithostrotum (Varro,
R. R. iii. 2.4; 1.10;
Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxvi. 189) was
probably applied to a pavement made of small pieces of stone or marble of natural colours,
and distinguished from those of coloured glass or some other artificial composition. Mosaics
of glass were used to decorate ceilings.
The gilt
tesserae used in Christian mosaics for the background of the
pictures were formed by applying to a cube of earthenware two thin plates of glass with a
film of gold-leaf between them, and vitrifying the whole in a furnace. It was this discovery
that led to the extensive application of mosaic for the decoration of the walls, and more
particularly the apses, of Christian churches. After the ninth century the art of working in
mosaic ceased for a while in Rome and in Italy in general, to be revived at a later date in
the church of S. Cyprian at Murano
(1109) and the basilica of St. Mark's at
Venice (in and after the eleventh century), and afterwards at Rome itself. In Sicily, the
mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in the Royal Palace at Palermo were finished in 1143, while
those of the cathedral at Monreale were begun in 1172.
The reader is referred to Marquardt,
Das Privatleben der Römer,
625-632; Blümner's
Technologie, iii. 323-343; Von Rohden on
Mosaik in Baumeister's
Denkmäler; Gerspach,
La Mosaïque (1883); and
Morgan, Romano-British
Mosaic Pavements (1886).
