Lapide pingere: On the materiality of late Classical and Hellenistic mosaics

Elena Walter-Karydi of the University of Saarbrücken examines the development and materiality of Late Classical and Hellenistic Greek floor mosaics, which Pliny characterized as painting with stone (lapide pingere). Walter-Karydi traces the origin of figurative floor mosaics to late fifth-century BC Athens, where a new type of residence with colonnaded inner courts emerged. Because wall stucco in these houses imitated monumental ashlar masonry and ceilings remained purely ornamental, floor mosaics in the andron and courtyard became the primary medium for domestic figural imagery.

The lecture follows the technical innovations by which mosaicists sought to overcome the discontinuity of natural river pebbles and achieve the surface and color modulation of painting. Early light-on-dark pebble floors in Athens and the House of the Mosaics at Eretria soon incorporated red and yellow stones. In fourth-century BC Pella, masters such as Gnosis used grey pebbles for shading, lead and clay strips for details, and painted stones, while adopting ground surfaces and highlights from Greek painting, which Walter-Karydi compares with wall paintings in the royal tombs at Vergina. These efforts led to the invention of opus tessellatum, using cut cubes of stone, glass, or faience, and opus vermiculatum, using tiny tesserae set as central emblems, exemplified by the dog mosaic from Alexandria.

Through examples from Pella, Rhodes, Delos, and Pompeii, including works signed by Asclepiades of Arados and Dioscurides of Samos, the talk traces the prominence of Dionysiac themes, Erotes, masks, and scenes from Menander's comedies. Walter-Karydi argues that Hellenistic mosaics remained original creations rather than copies of lost paintings, before Second Style Roman wall painting reclaimed the leading pictorial role in early first-century BC houses.