THE LIZZADRO MUSEUM'S MICRO WORLD

Florentine & Roman Mosaics

- HELEN SERRAS-HERMAN

Mosaics are images formed from pieces of hard materials. At a casual glance, mosaics look like paintings; however, they are individual pieces fitted together, whether tightly or with visible grouting to make one cohesive image. They can be chips of rough material, tumbled, cut and finished stones, or some combination of those, and can include relief works. Ancient mosaics often used square-shaped stones and glass four-sided tesserae.

While mosaics are still created today, very few living artists carry on the tradition, as it is extremely time-consuming.

The Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in Oakbrook, Illinois, near Chicago, is famous for its antique and modern collections of exquisite jade carvings and lapidary art, and most intriguing are their mosaics. Their anthology includes both Florentine and Roman mosaics, dating from the late 1700s to 1976.

FLORENTINE MOSAICS

Florentine pietra dura mosaics are stone pictures assembled by precisely cut stone pieces affixed to a stone backing. Hard stones (pietra dura), along with marble and scenic limestones, are thinly slabbed and ground into flat, irregularly shaped pieces, following an exact design pattern. They fit together to a close joint like a jigsaw puzzle, without grout between the stones. The finished effect depends upon the optical blending of the various pieces selected for the best gradation of colors and patterns. The work must have a flat, polished surface.

With this technique, artisans were able to obtain more realistic imagery of flowers, birds, animals, landscapes, human faces and figures. More contemporary intarsia are of a geometric nature. An extraordinary level of Florentine mosaic art form was achieved in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Florence, Italy, most inspired by earlier Italian paintings.

FLORENTINE MOSAIC PORTRAIT OF JOSEPH LIZZADRO