Mosaics in Situ
For the Antioch Recovery Project, I am particularly interested in the in situ locations of the mosaics at the time of excavation. Having read Christine Kondoleon’s introduction to the 2000 exhibition on the city of Antioch, we know that many of the mosaics now dispersed in various museums—such as the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), the Worcester Art Museum and the Dumbarton Oaks Museum—were found in the private homes of Antioch’s elite. That being said, I am interested in what the pictorial scenes on the mosaics would have signified to their original owners, and whether or not their location within the home had a greater significance. Were they purely decorative or did they relate in some way to the family’s ancestral history? Were they functional in design or simply for show? Were they always found on the floor or are there some instances in which mosaics were found on the walls of private homes? How did the mosaics visually speak and interact with the frescoes painted on the wall? Were the mosaics and wall paintings thematically related in any way?
So far, I am approaching this preliminary inquiry by looking at floor mosaics found within the private homes of Pompeii’s elite, and seeing whether I can make comparisons to those found in Antioch. In particular, I am revisiting my senior thesis topic on the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii and looking at its interior design and architectural layout. Although I mostly focused on the House of the Tragic Poet’s program of wall paintings, I did briefly discuss the House’s floor mosaic depicting a group of actors preparing to go on stage. A very helpful article that I used throughout researching and writing my senior thesis is Bettina Bergmann’s “The Roman House as Memory Theater: The House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii” from the 1994 issue of Art Bulletin. In this article, she includes detailed reconstructions of where in the Pompeiian home mosaics/wall paintings were found, and how contemporary Roman people interacted with them. She also includes a digital reconstruction of the house and its architectural floor plan; all of her included reconstructions are vibrantly colored and highly legible.
If possible, I would like to use SketchUp or another 3-D designing software to digitally reconstruct one of the private homes from Antioch in order to better understand where mosaics—like those in the BMA collection—were originally situated within a domestic setting. From a museum curatorial standpoint, I strongly believe that a digital rendering of an Antioch home and its interior design will help visitors better visualize where and how these mosaics were used within the home. This may also influence how future curators at the BMA decide to display the mosaics. Additionally, these visual reconstructions can be included within our video submission to the International Committee on the Conservation of Mosaics. From this exercise, we may be able to make stronger connections between various homes in Antioch and Daphne, and furthermore, we can perhaps better understand the people who once lived there.
Maya Kahane