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We are starting the week with the Great Mosaic on the #Oppian for #MosaicMonday. These late C1 CE wall mosaics from beneath the #BathsofTrajan show elite #Roman maritime villas. But they look like ghosts, because #Trajan's engineers despoiled the tesserae of the glass ocean.
MOSAIC OF A MARITIME VILLA, 64-98 CE. MUSEO DELLE TERME DI TRAIANO This is part of the lower register of the Great Mosaic, one of a row depicting maritime villas, seemingly floating on a rough, blank mortar background. The structure features long colonnaded porticoes extending into the sea on two moles, terminating in tower like pavilions known as diaetae. This architectural pincer enclosed a private harbour, creating a protected mooring that displays the extreme luxury of the C1 rich. The villa appears to float in empty white space because the original background was destroyed. The ocean and sky were likely made of expensive glass paste tesseræ. These were picked out for recycling by Trajan's demolition crews, a state-sanctioned salvage operation also evident in the Polyphemus mosaic of the Domus Aurea. Only the less valuable stone and terracotta pieces forming the architecture were left behind before the hall was walled up to serve as foundations for the Baths of Trajan.

ALT MOSAIC OF A MARITIME VILLA, 64-98 CE. MUSEO DELLE TERME DI TRAIANO This is part of the lower register of the Great Mosaic, one of a row depicting maritime villas, seemingly floating on a rough, blank mortar background. The structure features long colonnaded porticoes extending into the sea on two moles, terminating in tower like pavilions known as diaetae. This architectural pincer enclosed a private harbour, creating a protected mooring that displays the extreme luxury of the C1 rich. The villa appears to float in empty white space because the original background was destroyed. The ocean and sky were likely made of expensive glass paste tesseræ. These were picked out for recycling by Trajan's demolition crews, a state-sanctioned salvage operation also evident in the Polyphemus mosaic of the Domus Aurea. Only the less valuable stone and terracotta pieces forming the architecture were left behind before the hall was walled up to serve as foundations for the Baths of Trajan.

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Robert McCarthy retweeted
Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Sep 14
For #MosaicMonday, a colossal discovery. This is the Great #Mosaic, which I visited last Tuesday beneath the #BathsofTrajan in #Rome. Though fragmentary, this wall mosaic almost defies comprehension due to its quality and vastness. Let's have a look.🧵
HALL OF THE GREAT MOSAIC, 64-98 CE. MUSEO DELLE TERME DI TRAIANO A steep downward perspective into a subterranean space beneath heavy brick vaulting. A vast vertical wall dominates the centre, covered in the remains of a monumental mosaic. This hall measures 10 by 15 metres and is 12 metres tall. The ground level has not yet been excavated, and the lower three metres, still buried, were originally faced with marble slabs. At the centre of the long wall, part of a rectangular niche is visible, which must once have contained a statue. It is far too large to be part of a private domus and is built on lands expropriated by Nero for the Domus Aurea, whose main Oppian pavilion is nearby. The gigantic size and high quality of the surviving mosaic suggest an imperial commission, but of what? And was it a Neronian building or a Flavian or Domitianic one? At the very bottom right edge, a modern blue metal railing provides a sense of the staggering scale.

ALT HALL OF THE GREAT MOSAIC, 64-98 CE. MUSEO DELLE TERME DI TRAIANO A steep downward perspective into a subterranean space beneath heavy brick vaulting. A vast vertical wall dominates the centre, covered in the remains of a monumental mosaic. This hall measures 10 by 15 metres and is 12 metres tall. The ground level has not yet been excavated, and the lower three metres, still buried, were originally faced with marble slabs. At the centre of the long wall, part of a rectangular niche is visible, which must once have contained a statue. It is far too large to be part of a private domus and is built on lands expropriated by Nero for the Domus Aurea, whose main Oppian pavilion is nearby. The gigantic size and high quality of the surviving mosaic suggest an imperial commission, but of what? And was it a Neronian building or a Flavian or Domitianic one? At the very bottom right edge, a modern blue metal railing provides a sense of the staggering scale.

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#MosaicMonday brings us (📸 CSR Restauro Beni Culturali) back under the #BathsofTrajan in #Rome to see a marvel discovered in 2011, a detail of a huge wall #mosaic, probably #Flavian, from the exterior of a large public building buried by order of #Trajan.
MUSE IN ARCHITECTURAL SETTING, 64-105 CE. MUSÆUM UNDER THE BATHS OF TRAJAN In 2011, explorations behind the "Painted City" fresco in a cryptoporticus under the Baths of Trajan discovered a gigantic mosaic, 16 metres long by 6 metres tall, which showed female figures in an architectural setting rather like a scenæ frons, with one heroically nude male figure, Apollo. The fragmentary mosaic, the largest mural mosaic ever found in the Roman world, must have belonged to an important public building which archaeologists have hypothesised as a Musæum, a place for concerts, poetry readings, and other events. The area pictured shows one of the Muses, nude but for a blue drapery over one knee, standing against a background of columns, including one decorated with a male comic mask. This is a tiny part of the mosaic.

ALT MUSE IN ARCHITECTURAL SETTING, 64-105 CE. MUSÆUM UNDER THE BATHS OF TRAJAN In 2011, explorations behind the "Painted City" fresco in a cryptoporticus under the Baths of Trajan discovered a gigantic mosaic, 16 metres long by 6 metres tall, which showed female figures in an architectural setting rather like a scenæ frons, with one heroically nude male figure, Apollo. The fragmentary mosaic, the largest mural mosaic ever found in the Roman world, must have belonged to an important public building which archaeologists have hypothesised as a Musæum, a place for concerts, poetry readings, and other events. The area pictured shows one of the Muses, nude but for a blue drapery over one knee, standing against a background of columns, including one decorated with a male comic mask. This is a tiny part of the mosaic.

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