Mosaic Art Research Paper

Mosaics: Little Pieces of Art History Art has been used as a visual spectacle for places, people, and ideals since humans have walked on earth. The ideas behind each piece of art can range from naturalistic in depicting exact concepts or avant-garde with its shapes and designs. Every representation of art has a history, an inventor and a creator. Art can demonstrates the culture of a people along with religious undertones in one piece. Mosaic art in particular, spans over many years and it has become an important art technique used to express such circumstances. The term mosaic is defined as “the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone and other materials” (Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2011). The

Inside the Hagia Sophia basilica in Istanbul, Turkey, there is a mosaic dating back to 1261. A Byzantine artist created a traditional representation of the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist by using gold, gemstones, and colored glass. This mosaic was a theme of recent Byzantine art, depicting the “Deësis” the Greek word for “entreaty”. As Davies et al., book “Janson’s History of Art” outlines the importance, he states that, “the representation of Christ enthroned between the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist is frequent in Byzantine mosaic depictions, as it represents the Last Judgement”. This is just one example of a mosaic that is inside the Hagia Sophia. Many other mosaic pieces in the basilica have similar representations of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and other saints. This church is an excellent example of how mosaics were used to construct religious meanings through different images of important figures in the bible. Another example of the religious purpose of mosaics is in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Similar to the Hagia Sophia, the mosaics inside were also largely dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The interior of the basilica had large panels about the nave colonnade that illustrated scenes from the Hebrew Bible (Davies et al., Ch. 8: Early Jewish, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, Architectural Decoration: Wall Mosaics). In such, these symbolistic mosaics demonstrate the religious beliefs of those who created them in their respective