ARTISTIC, DECORATIVE AND ARCHITECTURAL MOSAICS

The art of mosaic lived its greatest splendor between the IV and VIII Century. Today there is still a great interest in this form of art. Mosaics produce wonderful visual effects, and one of the great advantages is that a mosaic can get installed outside and its bright colors will never fade away.

With the triumph of Christianity and the consequent building of Christian Churches mural mosaic becomes one of the highest forms of sacred art. The art of mosaic lived its greatest splendor during the IV and VIII Century. Major evidence of this can be seen in Rome, Constantinople, Ravenna and later in Venice. The two mosaic styles known today as “Roman” and “Byzantine” originate in this period of time. In the Byzantine age mosaics were made from colored glass, gold and mother of pearl which gave them an incomparable beauty. Without doubt, that was the most significant era of mosaics. The small little pieces used to make a mosaic are called “tesserae”. They can be either in glass or marble. On the one hand, marble tesserae have the advantage of being much harder so better for floor mosaics, but on the other hand the variety of colors is not as large as in glass. Artistic tesserae are still produced by hand on the island of Murano (near Venice, Italy), home of the artistic glass mosaic. Colors are melted directly into the glass, which gets flattened out to cool down before finally cut into many small pieces. The entire procedure is done by hand, making the glass tesserae extremely valuable. One of the greatest advantages of mosaics is that it can be installed outdoors, neither sun nor rain can affect the colors. In fact, we can still admire mosaics that are thousands of years old. In the past few years great architects and famous artists have taken interest in and have drawn closer to this millenary expression of art, proposing mural decoration to embellish and enhance religious buildings.