Mosaic is the art of creating images with small pieces of colored glass, stone or other material. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. 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.

Art History

Mosaics of the 4th century BC are found in the Macedonian palace-city of Aegae, and they enriched the floors of Hellenistic villas, and Roman dwellings from Britain to Dura-Europos. Splendid mosaic floors are found in Roman villas across north Africa. In Rome, Nero and his architects used mosaics to cover the surfaces of walls and ceilings in the Domus Aurea, built AD 64.

The mosaics of the Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina in Sicily are the largest collection of late Roman mosaics in the world and are protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The large villa rustica, which was probably owned by Emperor Maximian, was largely built in the early 4th century. The mosaics were covered and protected by a landslide in the 12th century for 700 years. The most important pieces are the Circus Scene, the 64 m long Great Hunting Scene, the Little Hunt, the Labours of Hercules and the famous Bikini Girls, showing girls in modern-looking bikinis. The peristyle, the imperial apartements and the thermae were also decorated with ornamental and mythological mosaics. Other important examples of Roman mosaic art in Sicily were unearthed on the Piazza Vittoria in Palermo where two houses were discovered. The most important scenes here depicted Orpheus, Alexander the Great's Hunt and the Four Seasons.

In 2000 archaeologists working in Leptis Magna, Libya uncovered a 30 ft length of five colorful mosaics created during the 1st or 2nd century. The mosaics show a warrior in combat with a deer, four young men wrestling a wild bull to the ground, and a gladiator resting in a state of fatigue, staring at his slain opponent. The mosaics decorated the walls of a cold plunge pool in a bath house within a Roman villa. The gladiator mosaic is noted by scholars as one of the finest examples of mosaic art ever seen — a "masterpiece comparable in quality with the Alexander mosaic in Pompeii."

Early Christian art

With the building of Christian basilicas in the late 4th century, wall and ceiling mosaics were adapted to Christian uses. The earliest examples, such as those of the first basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul were all destroyed, but the mosaics of Santa Constanza and Santa Pudenziana, both from the 4th century, survived. The winemaking putti in the ambulatory of Santa Constanza still follow the classical tradition (ie. feast of Bacchus). Another great Constantinian basilica, the Church of the Nativity in Betlehem partially preserved its original mosaic floor with typical Roman geometric motifs. The so-called Tomb of the Julii, near the crypt beneath St Peter's Basilica, is a fourth-century vaulted tomb with wall and ceiling mosaics that are given Christian interpretations. The former Tomb of Galerius in Thessaloniki, converted into a Christian church during the course of the 4th century, was embellished with very high artistic quality mosaics. Only fragments survived of the original decoration, especially a band depicting saints with hands raised in prayer, in front of complex architectural fantasies.