Mosaics

Mosaics

Mosaic is the art of creating images with small pieces of coloured glass, stone, pottery or other hard material. These small tiles or fragments  are called tesserae. From the first pebble designs, to the glittering effects of the Byzantine art, to the textured modern abstracts, mosaics have covered the insides  ad outsides of buildings with stunning effect.

  

           

Byzantine style

Glass tesserae in many different colours, including gold and silver, were used on the walls and ceiling during the Byzanite period (330-1453). This art was mainly based on religious Christian themes and by tilting the tesserae, light would reflect from the haloes and faces of holy people.

 Byzantine art, architecture, paintings, and other visual arts produced in the Middle Ages in the Byzantine Empire (centred at Constantinople) and in various areas that came under its influence. The pictorial and architectural styles that characterized Byzantine art, first codified in the 6th century, persisted with remarkable homogeneity within the empire until its final dissolution with the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.

A brief treatment of Byzantine art follows. For a treatment of Byzantine architecture, see Western architecture: The Christian East. For a treatment of Byzantine painting, see Western painting: Eastern Christian.

Byzantine art is almost entirely concerned with religious expression and, more specifically, with the impersonal translation of carefully controlled church theology into artistic terms. Its forms of architecture and painting grew out of these concerns and remained uniform and anonymous, perfected within a rigid tradition rather than varied according to personal whim; the result was a sophistication of style and a spirituality of expression rarely paralleled in Western art.

The earliest Byzantine architecture, though determined by the longitudinal basilica church plan developed in Italy, favoured the extensive use of large domes and vaults. Circular domes, however, were not structurally or visually suited to a longitudinal arrangement of the walls that supported them; thus, by the 10th century, a radial plan, consisting of four equal vaulted arms proceeding from a dome over their crossing, had been adopted in most areas. This central, radial plan was well suited to the hierarchical view of the universe emphasized by the Eastern church. This view was made explicit in the iconographic scheme of church decoration, set forth in the frescoes, or more often, mosaics, that covered the interiors of domes, walls, and vaults of churches in a complete fusion of architectural and pictorial expression. In the top of the central dome was the severe figure of the Pantocrator (the all-ruling Father). Below him, usually around the base of the dome, were angels and archangels and, on the walls, figures of the saints. The Virgin Mary was often pictured high in a half-dome covering one of the four radial arms. The lowest realm was that of the congregation. The whole church thus formed a microcosm of the universe. The iconographic scheme also reflected liturgy; narrative scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin, instead of being placed in chronological order along the walls, as in Western churches, were chosen for their significance as feast days and ranged around the church according to their theological significance.