page_title: Ancient Greek art
section_title: Mosaics
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Greek art / Mosaics
caption_attribution_description: English: Large mosaic floor from a house in Delos' "Jewelery Quarter". The central medailon: Athena in golden armour and helmet and Hermes in a chlamys (cloak) and petasos (traveling hat) surround a throning figure that can no longer be identified. Circa 100 BC. Archaeological Museum of Delos.Čeština: Velká mozaika z podlahy Inzuly klenotů na Délu. Centrální motiv: Athéna v brnění a Hermés v plášti (chlamis) a s kloboukem (petasos) stojí kolem sedící postavy, kterou již nelze indentifikovat. Kolem 100 před n. l. Archeologické mzuem na Délu.
context_page_description: Ancient Greek art stands out among that of other ancient cultures for its development of naturalistic but idealized depictions of the human body, in which largely nude male figures were generally the focus of innovation. The rate of stylistic development between about 750 and 300 BC was remarkable by ancient standards, and in surviving works is best seen in sculpture. There were important innovations in painting, which have to be essentially reconstructed due to the lack of original survivals of quality, other than the distinct field of painted pottery.
  Greek architecture, technically very simple, established a harmonious style with numerous detailed conventions that were largely adopted by Roman architecture and are still followed in some modern buildings. It used a vocabulary of ornament that was shared with pottery, metalwork and other media, and had an enormous influence on Eurasian art, especially after Buddhism carried it beyond the expanded Greek world created by Alexander the Great.
context_section_description: Mosaics were initially made with rounded pebbles, and later glass with tesserae which gave more colour and a flat surface. They were popular in the Hellenistic period, at first as decoration for the floors of palaces, but eventually for private homes. Often a central emblema picture in a central panel was completed in much finer work than the surrounding decoration. Xenia motifs, where a house showed examples of the variety of foods guests might expect to enjoy, provide most of the surviving specimens of Greek still-life.  In general mosaic must be considered as a secondary medium copying painting, often very directly, as in the Alexander Mosaic.
  The Unswept Floor by Sosus of Pergamon (c. 200 BC) was an original and famous trompe l'oeil piece, known from many Greco-Roman copies. According to John Boardman, Sosus is the only mosaic artist whose name has survived; his Doves are also mentioned in literature and copied. However, Katherine M. D. Dunbabin asserts that two different mosaic artists left their signatures on mosaics of Delos. The artist of the 4th-century BC Stag Hunt Mosaic perhaps also left his signature as Gnosis, although this word may be a reference to the abstract concept of knowledge.
  Mosaics are a significant element of surviving Macedonian art, with a large number of examples preserved in the ruins of Pella, the ancient Macedonian capital, in today's Central Macedonia. Mosaics such as the "Stag Hunt Mosaic and Lion Hunt" mosaic demonstrate illusionist and three dimensional qualities generally found in Hellenistic paintings, although the rustic Macedonian pursuit of hunting is markedly more pronounced than other themes. The 2nd-century-BC mosaics of Delos, Greece were judged by François Chamoux as representing the pinnacle of Hellenistic mosaic art, with similar styles that continued throughout the Roman period and perhaps laid the foundations for the widespread use of mosaics in the Western world through to the Middle Ages.
caption: A domestic floor mosaic depicting Athena, from the "Jewellery Quarter" of Delos, Greece, late 2nd or early 1st century BC
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