Home > Mosaic
:This article is about a decorative art. See Mosaic (disambiguation) for other meanings.
| Detail of mosaic from Herculaneum depicting Amphitrite
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| A small part of The Great Pavement at Woodchester, Gloucestershire, England. The 48 ft by 48 ft (15 m by 15 m) Roman mosaic uses 1.5 million 0.5 inch (12 mm) square pieces of stone. Once the floor of a Roman villa, it was laid around AD 325.
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| Mosaics in the apse at Monreale
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Mosaic is a medium of art that may embody the most meaningful iconography in a culture's most important settings, as in the cathedral of Monreale (below), or it may be a technique of decorative art , an aspect of interior decoration. In mosaics, small tiles or fragments of pottery (known as tesserae, diminutive tessellae) or of colored glass or clear glass backed with metal foils, are used to create a pattern or picture.
Mosaic was used in Antiquity for domestic interior decoration. Mosaics of the 4th century BC are found in the Macedonian palace-city of Aegina and they enriched the floors of Hellenistic villas, but mosaic floors are particularly associated with Roman dwellings, from Britain (illustration, right) to Dura-Europas . Splendid mosaic floors distinguished luxurious Roman villas across north Africa. In Rome, Nero and his architects innovated the extension of refined mosaics to cover the surfaces of wall and ceilings in the Domus Aurea, built .
When Christian basilicas began to be purpose-built in the late 4th century3rd century 4th century 5th century other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 4th century was that century which lasted from 301 to 400. Events Definitive declaration of biblical canon: Council of Carthage Demotic is replaced by Gr, wall and ceiling mosaics were adapted to Christian uses. The greatest development of Christian mosaics unfolded in the Byzantine empire including its outpost the Exarchate of RavennaFor other places named Ravenna, see Ravenna (disambiguation). Ravenna is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, population 134,631 (2001). The city is inland, but is connected to the Adriatic Sea by a canal. Ravenna once served as the seat of the R and its territories in SicilySicily Sicilia in Italian) is an autonomous region of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 25,700 sq. 1 million inhabitants. Towns and Cities Sicily's principal cities include the regional capital Palermo, together with t, and in its late rival VeniceVenice ( Italian Venezia German Venedig , the city of canals, is the capital of the region of Veneto, population 271,073 (2001). The city stretches across numerous small islands in a marshy lagoon along the Adriatic Sea in northeast Italy. The saltwater l, where mosaic encrusts the exterior and interior of St Mark's. In Western Europe, the demanding techniques of fresco replaced the even more labor-intensive techniques of mosaic.
Islamic architectureThis article is part of the Architectural history series. Prehistoric architecture Architecture of the ancient world Western architecture Islamic architecture Architecture of the Far East Contemporary architecture Islamic architecture is the entire range was the next inheritor of this technique. The intricate geometric designs used to decorate buildings in the Islamic world are often produced as mosaics. The process is known as zillij in North AfricaNorth Africa is the region of the continent of Africa north of the Sahara desert, comprising the Maghreb, including Libya and Egypt, and also by some definitions the Sudan. North Africa is vastly more uniform ethnically than anywhere in Africa south of th and qashani further east. Some of the best examples of Islamic mosaics were produced in Moorish Spain and are still visible at the Alhambra. The craft has continued through the ages, also popular in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and extending to Russia, where Moscow claimed to succeed Constantinople as the "Third Rome."
Many modern examples of mosaic exist, such as those of the Museum of Natural History station of the New York Subway. M.C. Escher was influenced by Moorish mosaics to begin his investigations into mathematical properties called tessellation. After the 1991 Gulf War a mosaic of the American President George H. W. Bush was placed in the lobby of the Al-Rashid Hotel in central Baghdad to be used as a sort of doormat as the sole of the shoe is considered unclean in Islamic countries and the act of walking on the mosaic is seen as an insult to George Bush. When American troops took the city in the 2003 invasion of Iraq the mosaic was replaced with one of Saddam Hussein
