Download or read book Greek and Roman Mosaics written by Umberto Pappalardo and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best-illustrated survey of a spectacular ancient art, now available in an affordable edition Mosaic has been called “painting for eternity,” and it is in fact one of the few arts of antiquity to survive in something like its original condition and variety. Mosaic pavements with geometric and figural motifs first appeared in Greece at the end of the fifth century BC and subsequently spread throughout the classical world, from the palaces of emperors and kings to even relatively modest private homes. Across the Mediterranean, local workshops cultivated many distinctive regional styles, while traveling teams of Hellenistic craftsmen produced figural mosaics of stunning refinement, often modeled after famous paintings; indeed, their work constitutes one of our only records of classical Greek painting, which has been almost entirely lost. The styles and techniques of the ancient mosaicist’s art are given a concise yet authoritative exposition in the first part of this handsome volume. The second, and larger, part conducts the reader on a chronologically ordered tour of the most important centers of the art form’s development, from the Macedonian capital of Pella, whose compositions in natural pebbles set a high artistic standard for mosaics at the beginning of their history, to the Basilica of San Vitale at Ravenna, whose wall and vault mosaics, with their glittering vision of a triumphant Christianity, mark the transition between antiquity and the Middle Ages. Special attention is given to Pompeii and its surroundings, where the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 preserved intact an astonishing variety of mosaics, including such ambitious figural scenes as the famous Alexander Mosaic, composed of some four million miniscule tesserae, as well as characteristically Roman pavements in black and white, and the brightly colored wall mosaics of garden grottoes. Featuring more than 230 vibrant photographs, many newly commissioned, Greek and Roman Mosaics is the first survey of its subject to be illustrated in full color. It will be an essential visual reference for every student of classical antiquity, and a source of considerable delight for art lovers.
Download or read book Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World written by Katherine M. D. Dunbabin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive account of mosaics in the ancient world from the early pebble mosaics of Greece to the pavements of Christian churches in the East. Separate chapters in Part I cover the principal regions of the Roman Empire in turn, in order to bring out the distinctive characteristics of their mosaic workshops. Questions of technique and production, of the role of mosaics in architecture, and of their social functions and implications are treated in Part II. The book discusses both well-known works and recent finds, and balances consideration of exceptional masterpieces against standard workshop production. Two main lines of approach are followed throughout: first, the role of mosaics as a significant art form, which over an unbroken span illuminates the evolution of pictorial style better than any comparable surviving medium; and secondly, their character as works of artisan production closely linked to their architectural context.
Download or read book The World Underfoot written by Hallie M. Franks and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Greek Classical period, the symposium--the social gathering at which male citizens gathered to drink wine and engage in conversation--was held in a room called the andron. From couches set up around the perimeter, symposiasts looked inward to the room's center, which often was decorated with a pebble mosaic floor. These mosaics provided visual treats for the guests, presenting them with images of mythological scenes, exotic flora, dangerous beasts, hunting parties, or the spectre of Dionysos: the god of wine, riding in his chariot or on the back of a panther. In The World Underfoot, Hallie M. Franks takes as her subject these mosaics and the context of their viewing. Relying on discourses in the sociology and anthropology of space, she presents an innovative new interpretation of the mosaic imagery as an active contributor to the symposium as a metaphorical experience. Franks argues that the images on mosaic floors, combined with the ritualized circling of the wine cup and the physiological reaction to wine during the symposium, would have called to mind other images, spaces, or experiences, and in doing so, prompted drinkers to reimagine the symposium as another kind of event--a nautical voyage, a journey to a foreign land, the circling heavens or a choral dance, or the luxury of an abundant past. Such spatial metaphors helped to forge the intimate bonds of friendship that are the ideal result of the symposium and that make up the political and social fabric of the Greek polis.
Download or read book Byzantine Mosaics written by Nano Chatzidakis and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the luxury of their materials, technical precision, beauty, and aesthetic grandeur, Byzantine mosaics, particularly the wall mosaics, constitute the most impressive manifestation of Byzantine monumental painting. Highly expensive and laborious works of art, they were commissioned and dedicated by emperors, dignitaries, state officials and members of the Church hierarchy, in order to enhance the dwellings of Divinity, important churches and monasteries; and at the same time to manifest the power, glory and legendary wealth of His earthly representatives. A brilliant selection of mosaics from twenty-five famous monuments are presented here by Nano Chatzidakis, Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the University of Ioannina. In historical and stylistic terms, they cover the development of mosaic art from the 5th to the 14th century, which is described and analysed efficiently by the author in the first part of the volume. The unique pictorial character and special artistic importance of each individual mosaic ensemble presented in this volume is superbly illustrated and emerges strikingly through a full discussion of the stylistic and aesthetic physiognomy of the mosaics it comprises, and a brief reference to the monument it adorns.
Download or read book Ancient Mosaics written by Roger Ling and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text traces the history of mosaics, examining its chronological evolution from Hellenistic to Early Christian times and its regional variations. Topics discussed include mosaic technique and workshop organization and the relationship of mosaic to other forms of interior design.
Download or read book Artists and Signatures in Ancient Greece written by Jeffrey M. Hurwit and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers insight into Greek conceptions of art, the artist, and artistic originality by examining artists' signatures in ancient Greece.
Download or read book Artists and Artistic Production in Ancient Greece written by Kristen Seaman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artists and Artistic Production in Ancient Greece questions many long-held ideas and provides a deeper understanding of particular artists and architects.
Download or read book The Mosaics of Roman Crete written by Rebecca J. Sweetman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the rich corpus of mosaics created in Crete during the Roman and Late Antique eras. It provides essential information on the style, iconography, and chronology of the material, as well as discussion of the craftspeople who created them and the technologies they used. The contextualized mosaic evidence also reveals a new understanding of Roman and Late Antique Crete. It helps shed light on the processes by which Crete became part of the Roman Empire, its subsequent Christianization, and the pivotal role the island played in the Mediterranean network of societies during these periods. This book provides an original approach to the study of mosaics and an innovative method of presenting a diachronic view of provincial Cretan society.
Download or read book Mosaics as History written by G. W. Bowersock and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-15 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past century, exploration and serendipity have uncovered mosaic after mosaic in the Near East—maps, historical images and religious scenes constituting a treasure of new testimony from antiquity. In them, Bowersock finds historical evidence, illustrations of literary and mythological tradition, religious icons, and monuments to civic pride.
Download or read book Mosaics in the Medieval World written by Liz James and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 1748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Liz James offers a comprehensive history of wall mosaics produced in the European and Islamic middle ages. Taking into account a wide range of issues, including style and iconography, technique and material, and function and patronage, she examines mosaics within their historical context. She asks why the mosaic was such a popular medium and considers how mosaics work as historical 'documents' that tell us about attitudes and beliefs in the medieval world. The book is divided into two part. Part I explores the technical aspects of mosaics, including glass production, labour and materials, and costs. In Part II, James provides a chronological history of mosaics, charting the low and high points of mosaic art up until its abrupt end in the late middle ages. Written in a clear and engaging style, her book will serve as an essential resource for scholars and students of medieval mosaics.
Download or read book Roman Mosaics in the J Paul Getty Museum written by Alexis Belis and published by J. Paul Getty Museum. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mosaics in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum span the second through the sixth centuries AD and reveal the diversity of compositions found throughout the Roman Empire during this period. Elaborate floors of stone and glass tesserae transformed private dwellings and public buildings alike into spectacular settings of vibrant color, figural imagery, and geometric design. Scenes from mythology, nature, daily life, and spectacles in the arena enlivened interior spaces and reflected the cultural ambitions of wealthy patrons. This online catalogue documents all of the mosaics in the Getty Museum’s collection, presenting their artistry in new color photography as well as the contexts of their discovery and excavation across Rome's expanding empire—from its center in Italy to provinces in southern Gaul, North Africa, and ancient Syria. The free online edition of this open-access catalogue, available at www.getty.edu/publications/romanmosaics/, includes zoomable high-resolution photography, embedded glossary terms and additional comparative images, and interactive maps drawn from the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book, CSV and JSON downloads of the object data from the catalogue, and JPG and PPT downloads of the main catalogue images.
Download or read book Tunisian Mosaics written by Aïcha Ben Abed Ben Khader and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2006 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Roman Empire expanded its African settlements in the early centuries of the common era, thousands of mosaic floor pavements were fashioned to adorn the townhouses and rural estates of the African upper classes. Between the second and sixth centuries, mosaic art blossomed, particularly in Africa Proconsularis, the region comprising modern Tunisia. In contrast to the official art of imperial Rome, mosaics generally expressed the worldviews of private citizens. These artworks are remarkable for the intricate beauty of their polychromatic geometric and floral designs, as well as for figural scenes depicting the interests and activities of the patrons who commissioned them--scenes of daily life, athletic contests, gladiator spectacles, and classical literature and mythology. Abundantly illustrated throughout, Tunisian Mosaics: Treasures from Roman Africa offers the general reader a lively introduction to this extraordinary ancient art. Initial chapters survey the historical background of Roman Africa and discuss the development of mosaic art in the Mediterranean. Subsequent chapters profile Tunisia's major mosaic sites and tour the collections of important museums. A final chapter surveys current initiatives to preserve this heritage for future generations.
Download or read book Italian Mosaics 300 1300 written by Joachim Poeschke and published by Abbeville Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italian Mosaics: 300-1300 is the first comprehensive and well-researched overview of the many stunning examples of the art that still survive. It is lavishly illustrated with superb color plates, the majority of them new, specially commissioned photographs. This volume focuses on Early Christian and medieval mosaics in Italy. Each of the nineteen chapters is concise and authoritative, offering a descriptive and interpretive essay on all aspects of mosaics covering the artists and their patrons in the context of their cultural and political history. Most essays conclude with a diagram of the site, followed by a series of full- and double-page color plates showing the entire cycle. While this volume is the predecessor to the Italian Frescoes series, it also stands alone as a masterpiece of art and scholarship, which will be welcomed by art lovers and art historians alike.
Download or read book Hidden Mosaics written by Alexander Billinis and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-11-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Osman, a Turk, met Yiannis, a Greek, by chance, in Izmir--known to Greeks, and to history, as Smyrna--both men still believed, to a greater or lesser extent, the national mythologies of Turkey and Greece. There was, however, an issue-they looked like identical twins. Osman, the more thoughtful of the two, could not get this similarity out of his mind. It set him on a quest to peel back the plaster of Turkish and Greek national identities, to find the mosaic beneath. This is the main theme of the novel, yet given the "millennium-long delicate and deadly embrace" of Greece and Turkey, and the times in question, the mid 2010s, there are several important subtexts to the story. First, there is the economic crisis in Greece, which impacts a semi-employed divorced father like Yiannis and prompts thoughts of emigration to relatives in Australia. Second, there is the crony capitalist boom in Turkey, where a nouveau riche class of Islamists from the Anatolian interior clash with urban, urbane, secular Turks. Osman, son of a Turkish colonel, American educated and avowedly secular, with a liberal wife, feels increasingly like a fish out of water in Erdogan's Turkey. Throughout the work, on both sides of the Aegean, the open wounds of the 1920s Greek-Turkish population exchange, centuries of Greek-Turkish conflicts, the Greek Civil War, and other ethnoreligious conflicts in the Balkans, most notably Yugoslavia in the 1990s, surface constantly in the lives of both the main protagonists, their families and friends.
Download or read book A Companion to Greek Art written by Tyler Jo Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive, authoritative account of the development Greek Art through the 1st millennium BC. An invaluable resource for scholars dealing with the art, material culture and history of the post-classical world Includes voices from such diverse fields as art history, classical studies, and archaeology and offers a diversity of views to the topic Features an innovative group of chapters dealing with the reception of Greek art from the Middle Ages to the present Includes chapters on Chronology and Topography, as well as Workshops and Technology Includes four major sections: Forms, Times and Places; Contacts and Colonies; Images and Meanings; Greek Art: Ancient to Antique
Download or read book The Art of Contact written by S. Rebecca Martin and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-05-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proem to Herodotus's history of the Greek-Persian wars relates the long-standing conflict between Europe and Asia from the points of view of the Greeks' chief antagonists, the Persians and Phoenicians. However humorous or fantastical these accounts may be, their stories, as voiced by a Greek, reveal a great deal about the perceived differences between Greeks and others. The conflict is framed in political, not absolute, terms correlative to historical events, not in terms of innate qualities of the participants. Becky Martin reconsiders works of art produced by, or thought to be produced by, Greeks and Phoenicians during the first millennium B.C., when they were in prolonged contact with one another. Although primordial narratives that emphasize an essential quality of Greek and Phoenician identities have been critiqued for decades, Martin contends that the study of ancient history has not yet effectively challenged the idea of the inevitability of the political and cultural triumph of Greece. She aims to show how the methods used to study ancient history shape perceptions of it and argues that art is especially positioned to revise conventional accountings of the history of Greek-Phoenician interaction. Examining Athenian and Tyrian coins, kouros statues and wall mosaics, as well as the familiar Alexander Sarcophagus and the sculpture known as the "Slipper Slapper, " Martin questions what constituted "Greek" and "Phoenician" art and, by extension, Greek and Phoenician identity.
Download or read book Ancient Greek Painting and Its Echoes in Later Art written by Stelios Lydakēs and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his introduction, Stelios Lydakis notes, "It would be impossible for an art historian to study the works of antiquity without extensive reference to their influence on the art of the centuries that followed." Lydakis provides a complete history of ancient Greek painting from the earliest examples in Crete, Thera, and Mycenae to those of the classical and Roman epochs. Through a multitude of examples, he shows how these ancient works shaped modern ones. The literary references he considers include the works of Lucian, Philostratos, Pausanias, and Pliny the Elder. The works of art reproduced include wall paintings from the Palace of Knossos, Thera, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Oplontis; vases from the Mycenaean through the Classical periods; reliefs from the Parthenon; and mosaics from Pompeii and Delos. The book also features paintings made in later centuries by such artists as Mantegna, Titian, Dürer, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Rubens that were inspired by antique models.
