Busacca Gallery

Made from hundreds of pieces of inlaid stone or enamel glass in a medium known as micromosaic. This is from the 8th or 19th century, a micro-mosaic of the Vaticano in Rome, a fabulous Micro Mosaic. This is one of the best I have seen in a long time. The tiniest of tesserae, almost sand size, makes up the Micromosaic. The antique Micro Mosaic, is set with tiny tiles that form a picture of St. Peter's Square in Rome. Set in black Onyx, the scene is done in colors of browns, corals, blues, and whites. These old mosaics are the best, showing a true artistry in working with such tiny pieces to create the intricate design. So beautifully portrayed that you can almost feel Vaticano in Rome. The surface is so smooth which is the real indicator of the age. Very rare subject matter and in very good condition with no missing tesserae. This lovely richly colored Roman micromosaic from the mid part of the 18th or 19th century is of the famed Saint Peters Square in Rome. Those of you that have been fortunate to have visited Rome know this magical place and I am sure would enjoy having this exquisite treasure. Micro-mosaics are mosaics made from incredibly tiny tesserae (mosaic pieces), sometimes reaching 4,000 tesserae in one square inch. The history of this art form dates back centuries upon centuries. Through gradual improvement, the materials and methods of micro-mosaics improved into the sophisticated modern technique. Micro mosaics have been discovered as far back as Roman Empire times (very fine examples have been uncovered at Pompeii). In this time frame, micro mosaics were made with stone and glass. When the Italian Renaissance began, micro mosaics were being created in Italy. After the Italian Renaissance, when St. Peter's Basilica was completed (circa 1600), the Vatican needed to create humidity-proof religious art that could withstand the basilica's tendency toward dampness. The people in charge of art in the basilica developed a type of enamel (the recipe of which is still kept secret) that wouldn't fade or rot. The 1700s and 1800s produced the smallest micro mosaic art in the history of the art form. In the late 1800s, the creation of micro mosaic art declined. Italian micromosaic pieces an enamel stone-like material, to make small figurative images. Surviving ancient Roman mosaics include some very finely worked panels using very small tesserae, especially from Pompeii, but only from Byzantine art are there mosaic icons in micromosaic with tesserae as small as the best from the Modern period. Byzantine examples, which are very rare, were religious icons. The best known shows the Twelve Great Feasts of the Greek Orthodox Church and is in the Bargello in Florence. Another is in Rome and was crucial in developing the iconography of the Man of Sorrows in the West.    From the Renaissance they began to be made in Italy, reaching the height of their popularity in the mid 19th century, when Rome was the centre of production; there was a Vatican Mosaic Studio from 1576, set up to create mosaic replicas of the altarpieces in St Peter's Basilica, which were being damaged by the humid conditions of the vast and crowded interior. They were popular purchases by visitors on the Grand Tour, easily portable, and often taken home to set into an object there. Typical scenes were landscapes of Roman views, rarely of any artistic originality, and the micromosaics were small panels used to inset into furniture or onto snuffboxes and similar objects, or for jewellery. Religious subjects were copied from paintings.    The very smallest mosaic pieces come from works from the period between the late 18th century and the end of the 19th. Fortunato Pio Castellani (1794-1865) expanded the range of subjects in his work in the "archeological style", copying Roman and Early Christian wall-mosaics. It was even imitated by porcelain painters, who painted faint lines across their work to suggest the edges of tesserae. The ancient mosaic technique was brought to Rome by artisans from Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the center of mosaic work in Italy, in the late 16th century. As great Renaissance paintings on the walls of Saint Peter’s Basilica began deteriorating from environmental conditions, church officials decided to replace them with mosaic replicas and relocated the canvas originals elsewhere in the Vatican. At this time, Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572 – 85) also commissioned new mosaics in the domes and chapels of St. Peter’s. In the early nineteenth century, several of the artisans trained at Saint Peter’s Basilica began opening private micromosaic shops in Rome, concentrated in the area of the Piazza di Spagna, to capitalize on the flourishing tourist market and the demand for souvenirs of the major Roman landmarks. Victorian travelers who could afford micromosaic views were drawn more towards the colorful, exquisitely crafted scenes than the neoclassical etchings of Piranesi favored by their predecessors. While ancient mosaics employed square stone pieces known as tesserae, their Victorian descendants were made from much smaller pieces of opaque enamel called smalti, created in the form of long thin tubes called filati that were cut and set into a slow-drying oil-based mastic which allowed the artist more time to work on his composition. By the 18th century the artisans had developed more than 28,000 different tints which enabled them to create subtle tonal ranges approaching those of oil painting.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_mosaic

Micro Mosaics

Micro mosaics are detailed and complex designs or pictures made from extremely small bits of stone, colored glass, or other materials. Micro mosaics date back to as early as the 3rd century B.C. but were most popular in the mid 19th century. Most micro mosaics came from Europe or the Middle East and are often found on jewelry or objects such as shrines and crucifixes.