![]() ![]() Peter's Basilica, though occasionally Roman mythology was a subject too. Mosaic work jewellery of this period usually depicted famous Italian landmarks such as the Colosseum and St. It was also a famous glass producer, and canny Italian craftsmen quickly turned their glass-making skills to making stunning miniature micromosaic pictures for their rich visitors. Italy was a very popular tourist spot as it had a long and prestigious history in arts and culture - a favourite subject in aristocratic circles. Members of rich European families would travel around Europe, taking in the sights and cultures of different countries. Wearing micromosaic jewelry became popular during the Grand Tour period (17th–19th century). Asia has produced a number of contemporary examples using modern precision machinery to produce the diminutive elements. The best collections are in the Hermitage Museum and the Gilbert Collection in London. The best work can achieve 3,000 to 5,000 tesserae per square inch. Ī distinctive feature of micromosaics is that the tesserae are usually oblong rather than square. It was even imitated by porcelain painters, who painted faint lines across their work to suggest the edges of tesserae. ![]() Fortunato Pio Castellani (1794–1865) expanded the range of subjects in his work in the "archeological style", copying Roman and Early Christian wall-mosaics. The very smallest mosaic pieces come from works from the period between the late 18th century and the end of the 19th. Religious subjects were copied from paintings. ![]() Typical scenes were landscapes of Roman views, rarely of any artistic originality, and the micromosaics were small panels used to inset into furniture or onto snuffboxes and similar objects, or for jewellery. They were popular purchases by visitors on the Grand Tour, easily portable, and often taken home to set into an object there. History įrom the Renaissance they began to be made in Italy, reaching the height of their popularity in the mid 19th century, when Rome was the centre of production there was a Vatican Mosaic Studio from 1576, set up to create mosaic replicas of the altarpieces in St Peter's Basilica, which were being damaged by the humid conditions of the vast and crowded interior. The Greek Cardinal Bessarion gave several icons to Saint Peter's, Rome, and lent Greek manuscripts to Francesco d'Este to be copied d'Este many have had some of Paul II's icons. Some later passed to Lorenzo de' Medici, who owned 11 mosaic icons in at his death in 1492. 1471), who by 1457 had 23 micromosaic icons and 13 painted or relief ones. Prominent collectors included Pope Paul II (d. There was a new influx of icons and Greeks to Italy after 1453. Another is in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome and was crucial in developing the iconography of the Man of Sorrows in the West it was believed to be an original image from the time of Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century, but is now dated to around 1300 in Constantinople. It is said to have been given to the Florence Baptistry in 1394 by the widow of a Byzantine court official. The best known shows the Twelve Great Feasts of the Greek Orthodox Church and is in the Bargello in Florence. They are usually framed and treated like portable paintings.īyzantine micromosaics, usually all attributed to Constantinople, apparently all or nearly all come from the Late Byzantine period, from around 1300 until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Byzantine examples, which are very rare, were religious icons. Surviving ancient Roman mosaics include some very finely worked panels using very small tesserae, especially from Pompeii, but only from Byzantine art are there mosaic icons in micromosaic with tesserae as small as the best from the Modern period. Micromosaics (or micro mosaics, micro-mosaics) are a special form of mosaic that uses unusually small mosaic pieces ( tesserae) of glass, or in later Italian pieces an enamel-like material, to make small figurative images. Byzantine mosaic icon, 45 cm high, 13th century. ![]()
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