В музеях древнего искусства, в некоторых наиболее ancient temples of Europe and Asia, as well as on the narrow streets of ancient cities that managed to preserve examples of the monumental art of the distant past, you can meet fragments of ornaments and other images that are amazing in beauty and appeal, made up of small pieces of stone or smalt - a mosaic. What is a mosaic? This is an ornament, a landscape or an image of a man, not painted with colors, but collected from small, similar to a brush brush, pieces of natural materials. They are uneven, irregular in shape, but nevertheless tightly fitted to each other, which creates a whole artistic image.
The most devoted fans of this speciesart were the Romans. Well-off townspeople always decorated their houses with mosaics, fountains and paths in gardens, stone benches and platforms near the house. With the development of crafts and arts, mosaic artists more and more honed their skills. In the era of early Christianity, this art becomes the most popular in the decoration of churches. Magnificent samples of gold and silver mosaic can still be seen in the most ancient Christian shrines - in the famous cathedral of Aachen (Germany), in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, in the temples of Italy, etc.
Gold and silver slices of smalt are stillradiate "unearthly divine" light, and images of saints on their background seem quite weightless, ethereal, soaring in space, which, undoubtedly, fully corresponds to the religious worldview that the technique successfully transmits. Mosaic was used to decorate not only Christian churches, this art masterfully owned by Islamic artists, creating their own Muslim shrines.
By the middle of the eighteenth century in Italyartisans learned to make the smallest pieces of colored glass, which contributed to the further development of mosaic art and its entry into secular life. What is a glass mosaic? Actually, the way of creating a work of art remained the same. The smallest pieces of colored glass were drowned in a binding base and created a multicolored art canvas. The only difference is that the glass represented an unlimited number of shades, and its pieces were so small that they allowed creating subtle color transitions. This made it possible for artists to even copy the great works of Renaissance painting.
In Russia, the first who was carried away by this technique was M.V. Lomonosov. Even in Germany, he studied the various properties of glass, and then in Russia he used this knowledge and his artistic talent to create monumental mosaic paintings and the opening of his workshop. Paintings in mosaic are vivid examples of this art. They were executed by the students and by Lomonosov himself.
So, what is a mosaic?This is an ancient art, which, thanks to its features, namely the fact that materials for mosaic masterpieces are stone and glass, remains in the centuries, and through many centuries, and even millennia, keeps for us amazing examples of creativity of masters.
