As you might imagine from
the name, the mosaic depicts a woman, or at least a woman’s head surrounded by
floral motifs. The mosaic is incomplete and is part of a larger floor; archaeologists
surmise that the room may have been part of a bath complex in a luxurious
private villa.
 |
| Photo by Adam Jones, Kelowna, BC, Canada CC BY-SA 2.0 |
The mosaic was discovered
during the middle of the First World War when the city was occupied by Austro-Hungary.
Soldiers digging earthworks in the centre of the city uncovered the mosaic at a
level of almost four metres below ground. The works were being undertaken in an
area of Durrës notable for archaeological finds, not far from where late
antique circular forum and the 2nd century AD Romans baths were
discovered.
Austrian archaeologist
Camillo Praschniker preserved part of the mosaic and included a picture of it
in his 1919 publication 'Archaeological research in Albania and Montenegro' (Archäologische
Forschungen in Albanien und Montenegro, jointly authored with Arnold Schober).
Praschniker and Schober apparently advised that, due to the rich archaeology under the
early 20th century city of Durrës, any new building should be
undertaken beyond the Dajlan Bridge but of course this was hardly practical for a important port city with shipping lanes across the Adriatic. The city has been continuously inhabited since at least the 7th
century BC, when a Greek colony was founded on an existing Illyrian settlement. Following the Greek foundation of Epidamnus the mixed Illyrian and Greek city thrived, eventually becoming Dyrrachium under the Romans, Durazzo under the Venetians and finally Durrës. Though this continued occupation is testament to the success of the foundation and its strategic location, it
means that the ancient part of the town is under the modern centre of the city. Most of the archaeology under the surface of the city will never be seen, and much of it is now lost or damaged.
The mosaic, luckily, was spared. It was covered over and not rediscovered until 1947, thanks to the detective work of local archaeologist
Vangjel Toçi. Toçi spent time talking to elderly locals as well as gleaning information
from Praschniker’s publication. He finally located the mosaic just 150 metres from the
Alexander Moisiu Theatre, at a depth of 3.8 metres under a two storey house.
In 1982 the mosaic was moved
from Durrës and is now on display in the National Historical Museum in Tirana. This
beautiful mosaic is made up of thousands of small natural pebbles, graded for
size and colour and then set into a wet surface of plaster or clay according to
a prepared design, probably a ‘cartoon’ of actual size. Dated to the second
half of the 4th century BC, it was made at a time when the art of
pebble mosaic was coming to its highest point, having developed from a simple
floor with embedded natural pebbles which provided a harder wearing and more
waterproof surface than beaten earth.
Floors with embedded pebbles
appear in the Greek world as far back as the Neolithic period, making use of
natural river or sea pebbles of varying size, usually up to around 5 centimetres in
length. The pebbles are set into the floor, sometimes in clay, and have no
discernable pattern. Only one example, in the floor of a house in Tiryns in a
Late Mycenaean context, might be considered to have the pebbles placed in a
rudimentary design.
There is a gap in the
archaeological record of such floors after the end of Bronze Age and when they appear
again they are found in a religious rather than domestic context. At the Sanctuary
of Artemis Orthia in Sparta archaeologists have dated the temenos area paved
with river stones to the beginning of the 8th century BC, while the floor from
the temple of Athena Pronaia at Delphi, dated to the 6th century BC,
uses pebbles of several colours. This use of colour at Delphi is an interesting
development, but the colours are scattered randomly, not in a pattern and therefore
could not be termed a ‘mosaic’.
 |
| C8th BC Mosaics, Gordion. Photo by Stipich Béla |
For the earliest mosaics made
from pebbles we have to look to the east. In Asia Minor they are found
at Gordion in Phrygia (modern Turkey) in contexts dating from the 8th century BC onwards.
The floors use a variety of colours in geometric and curvilinear patterns, but
the designs are placed randomly, as though the craftsmen are laying the designs
directly rather than from a pre-designed plan.
There are also 7th century
BC examples of floors with geometric mosaics from Assyria at Arslan Tash and at
Til Barsip. Given that these mosaic floors predate the Greek examples some
scholars have suggested that the idea for pebble mosaics may have come from the
east. However it could also be the case that the Greek mosaics came about as a
natural progression from plain pebble floors to those with smaller and
different coloured pebbles, and from random colour scatters to patterns.
By the 5th
century BC in Greece pebble mosaics exhibit a variety of bi-chrome geometric
patterns, and occasionally animals are also depicted, often in friezes. A particularly
interesting mosaic has been found in Corinth, where a centaur decorates the
floor of some baths dated to the last quarter of the 5th century. The
artist uses black lines to delineate where the Centaur’s limbs overlap and to highlight
details, such as the leopard's spots.
 |
| Bath of Centaurs, Corinth. Photo: ASCSA.net |
The next stage in the
development of pebble mosaics is attested by the stunning examples from the
city of Olynthos in Chalcidice. Destroyed by Philip II
of Macedon in 348, the ruins of Olynthos provide us with a snapshot of life in a
late Classical town. The Olynthos mosaics are only in a very small percentage of
houses in the town – it seems that only the wealthiest could afford this kind
of decoration. Geometric mosaics occur in some corridors and courtyards of the
houses, but mostly they are to be found in the 'androns' - dining rooms where men
would hold their symposiums. Courtyards and androns would benefit from having
water resistant surfaces, and corridors from a hard-wearing surface. Thus the floors were
practical as well as decorative. They vary in quality: the pebbles are often not matched in size, and have varying amounts of plaster between them, giving an uneven look. Some of the floors employ two colours of pebbles, and others have
additional scattered colours.
In addition to geometric designs and
inscriptions, some of the Olynthos mosaics have figural scenes in the centre. We
have Bellerophon on his horse Pegasus battling the Chimaera, Thetis leading her
sister Nereids as they bring Achilles his armour, and Dionysus with his chariot
pulled by a leopard. The scenes are complicated, and some scholars speculate
that they may have been influenced by the new architectural decoration being
carried out in nearby Macedon. There King Archelaus (413-399) had moved his capital from Aegae to Pella
and built a grand palace decorated with wall paintings by Zeuxis, the most
famous artist of the day. Figural decoration
may have become popular through painting and then transferred to the mosaic
floors, such as those in the houses at Olynthos.
 |
| Pegasus mosaic at Olynthos. Photo C Perry |
It is also likely that
painting was responsible for the next development in pebble mosaic, the
category in which the ‘Belle of Durrës’ may be placed. The finest examples of
this category are from private houses in Pella and date to around 300BC. In
addition to bichrome geometric pattern mosaics, some of the androns found at Pella have extremely
detailed, painterly central mosaics using very small pebbles in a variety of different
colours. The range of colours allow the artist to depict three dimensional
forms and movement in the figures. They also allow the artist to depict shading
and foreshortening. The pebbles thus need to be very carefully graded in terms
of size and colour and the stones closely packed. For the very detailed
modelling tiny pebbles were used.
 |
| Stag Hunt mosaic, Pella. Note scrolling floral motif border. |
The stag hunt mosaic shows two figures in
action, the shading allows their cloaks to seem as though they are billowing in the wind. The figures may
actually be Hephaistion and Alexander (the Great) himself. Other subjects include
the Abduction of Helen, a lion hunt, and Dionysus riding a panther. Lead strips are sometimes used to outline or separate elements of the
design, and in the Abduction of Helen mosaic there are also terracotta strips.
This confirms that the design of the mosaic would first have been created as a
full scale cartoon since although lead could be bent to shape, terracotta
strips would have to have been fired to size before laying. The eyes of the
figures, and some other small decorative elements are missing and were probably
made of either gems or worked stones.
 |
| Detail of the Lion Hunt mosaic, Pella. Photo C Perry |
With the mosaics at Pella, which are the
finest of any ancient pebble mosaics, the technique has reached its limit. It
is not a big step from having to intricately size and sort the pebbles to
making them from limestone or other material. By 200BC, cut stone tesserae
replace natural pebbles to make mosaics, augmented by terracotta tesserae and sometimes painted to give a greater colour range.
The Durrës
mosaic, though not as fine, shares many of the characteristics of the Pella
mosaics. As usual for figural polychrome mosaics design is in light colours on
a dark background. The woman has an intricate hairstyle with a braid over her
forehead, and black lines of pebbles delineate the edges of the design and key
features. The most remarkable thing about the mosaic is
the modelling of the beautiful flowers and scrolling plant tendrils framing the
head, as they give a three-dimensional effect and also use foreshortening.
 |
| Photo by Adam Jones, Kelowna, BC, Canada CC BY-SA 2.0 |
The flowers and tendrils have
a painterly quality, and very similar versions of the design can be found
painted on other media including vases from south Italy, Macedonian tombs, and an
encaustic chair back found in the so-called tomb of Eurydike in Aigae,
ceremonial capital of Macedon. The design can also be found in several other pebble
mosaics, as a border (see above) and in one room of Philip II’s palace at Aigae (sometimes called the Throne Room) it makes up the
whole design. It also occurs in metalwork and textiles, for example in the Royal Tombs of Vergina. The combination of the scrolling tendrils, which may be honey suckle, and horn shaped flowers (possibly campanula?) was a very popular motif across media and locations.
In fact we have a literary
reference to the origin of this design, referred to as the ‘scrolling floral
motif’, which appears during the mid 4th century. The motif is
connected with the Sicyonian painter Pausias who, amongst other things, is
credited with being able to correctly render foreshortening. Pliny relates the
story of Pausias’ love for a woman named Glycera who was said to have invented
flower garlands. Previously garlands had been just of one type of flower or
plant, but Glycera wound different flowers together, creating a new fashion.
Pliny tells us that “by striving in imitation with her he (Pausias) brought
that art (encaustic painting) to the most numerous variety of flowers. Finally
he painted her herself, sitting with a garland, one of the most famous of
pictures, known as the stephaneplocos (garland-weaver) or by others as the
stephanopolis (garland seller) since Glycera had supported her poverty by
selling garlands.” The particular character of Pausias’ painted garlands lay in
the variety of flowers twined together and his paintings of the garlands may have been the inspiration behind the design which was then copied and reworked in a variety of ways.
 |
| (C) Trustees of the British Museum |
You can see the similarities with the Durrës mosaic in the painted askos to the right, now in the British Museum. It was made in Canosa di Puglia, and dates to circa 310 - 290BC, so not far from
Epidamnus (ancient Durrës) in distance, or from our mosaic in time. This type of vessel was not made for a
practical use, but to be placed within the tomb. The depiction of the head, and its relationship
to the floral design, is very similar to the Durrës mosaic. The painting on the askos is faded, so it is not easy to see all of the scrolling tendrils on the photograph. However, there are very many other examples of Puglian wares featuring female heads framed by the
scrolling flower motif, usually on the shoulder of the vases (see below). This subject fits
the form of several vase forms, and though there are a variety of faces and hairstyles,
there is nothing in particular to identify the females as they appear on
various types of vases, including large red figure amphorae that served as
funerary vessels for both males and females and also the pelike - a container for liquids.
 |
| Amphora by the Baltimore Painter, Apulia, 330-320 BC, photo by Daderot |
In fact, isolated female heads are a recurrent feature on south Italian vases, either with or without the scrolling flower design. Though scholars have been tempted to identify the females, usually seeing them as the representation of a deity, the range of types, contexts and wares suggest that the identity of the female could have differed depending on the the viewer or owner of the vessel. Some Albanian scholars have
attempted to identify the figure in the Durrës mosaic: historian and
archaeologist Dr. Moikom Zeqo, while noting the similarity with the Apulian
wares, has suggested that the woman represents the Cretan goddess Eileithyia,
goddess of childbirth and midwifery whereas Professor Dr. Afrim Hoti has put forward the theory that the woman may be the
maiden Aura, a companion of the goddess Artemis who came from Phrygia.
Whoever the Belle of Durrës
may be, she is important because she is a manifestation of how the ancient city of Epidamnus was in touch with different ideas, techniques, trends and, of course, peoples. The pebble mosaic is a remarkable work in the Greek tradition, and an example of how ‘fashions’ moved across media and space in the 4th
century Greek world. The mosaic combines a design motif that may have originated in Sicyon, a technique that owes at least some its refinement to Macedonia, and a subject matter (the isolated female head) that had become popular in the cities of Magna Graecia, across the Adriatic. It is also a rare glimpse of how magnificent
Hellenistic Epidamnus must have been, most of it now hidden under the bustling modern city.
Further Reading
Mosaics of the Greek and
Roman World, Dunbabin, Katherine M. D.
Cambridge University Press (2001)
Vases with Face: Isolated Heads in South Italian Vase Painting, Heuer, Keely E. Metropolitan Museum Journal v. 50 (2015)
Cambridge University Press (2001)
Vases with Face: Isolated Heads in South Italian Vase Painting, Heuer, Keely E. Metropolitan Museum Journal v. 50 (2015)
Art in the Hellenistic Age,
Pollitt, Jerome J.
Cambridge University Press (2000)
Early Mosaics at Gordion,
Young, Rodney S.
Expedition Magazine 7.3 Penn
State University (1965)
Comments
Post a Comment