Summary: Mosaic In Pompeii

Dr. Carl James Grindley
Art and Civilization I Art 201
12/21/13
Mosaic in Pompeii
Pompeii is a city in Rome near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania. Along with Herculaneum, its sister city, Pompeii was destroyed, and completely buried, during a catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius. The eruption lasted two days on 24 August 79 AD. At the time of the eruption, the town could have had a population of about 20,000 people, and was located in an area in which Romans had their holiday villas. During eruption, Pompeii had reached its high point in society as many Romans frequently visited Pompeii on vacations. It is the only ancient town of which the whole topographic structure is known precisely as it was, with no
Mosaics were often used as flooring in Pompeii were largely used to decorate floors and entrance walls to houses and other buildings. These mosaics represented importance, advertisement and even propaganda. Many mosaic art work had some sort of influenced of animals, sea creatures, and people. Mosaics are imitations of paintings and of natural objects by means of colored stones, pieces of glass, and even of wood of different colors, cemented together with much art (Mosaic Work,
This is one of the most famous mosaic that has survived from the ancient times. This image is currently located in the National Museum in Naples. The Alexander Mosaic was found during the excavation of Pompeii in 1831 in the House of the Faun which is one of Pompeii 's grandest residences. There are still some debated as to what this image depicts. Some believe it depicts the Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great and the Persian king Darius III in the year 333 BC or the battle of Gaugamela in the year 331 BC, where Alexander the Great and Darius clashed once again. Another belief is that a Hellenistic painting was used as a model. According to the article it is stated that there are no clear Hellenistic antecedents for Scaurus ' mosaic (Curtis 564).The mosaic shows the magnificence of Greek monumental painting. The majority of figured scenes found on mosaics belonging to this period are drawn either from classical mythology or, to a lesser extent, from nature (Roman Mosaics in Greece, 311). There is no debate however on its beauty, detail, the skill woven into each detailed plate of mosaic tiles and the time it would have taken to put such a delicate and intricate piece together. The piece is made of roughly 4 million white, yellow, red, and black tesserae. The picture shows Alexander galloping into battle with a mass of troops behind him on the left hand side, pursuing Darius into a