Once upon a December

Short history of roman baroque mosaics

Pope Pius IX began his reign in 1846 at a very critical time, when dissatisfaction found vents in revolts, which could only be quelled by the intervention of foreign powers. The ferment in the dominion of the church was accentuated by the revolutionary disturbances throughout ascendant in all the states of Europe. A passionate aspiration towards national unity rose in Italy and on March 18, 1848 the revolution broke out in Milan. The Swiss Guard was disbanded and the pope made prisoner. Pius IX fled with the help of the French and Bavarian ambassadors to Gaeta, to return to Rome only in 1850 with the help of foreign arms; embittered and hostile towards any form of political liberalism, the pontiff had thrown himself into the arms of the Jesuits.

The continued existence of the Papal States in the subsequent decade depended in fact on the understanding of the protecting powers, France and Austria, until in 1870 the remnants of any States were lost and merged into the kingdom of Italy.

It is undoubtedly during this period that an important present such as the present table was offered in return for support. The Guelphs, traditionally allied with the Roman See would certainly have been in favour due to their stance against Prussia, the latter being the subject in 1875 of the pontiff’s Quod numquam.

The colour range of roman mosaics would have been fairly limited initially, as the material consisted of a translucent glass paste. So materials were developed, such as oil based mastics, until circa 1730 when the Vatican studio perfected opaque enamel and boasted it had over 15.000 colours and tints at the disposal of their artists. This new material also permitted for mosaics to be thinner and flatter, allowing the artist to introduce more subtlety in execution: `Painting became the ideal toward which mosaics aspired, but that aspiration would not have been possible without the thousands of different coloured tesserae, which permitted an exact imitation of the tonal range found in painting'. Mosaics did not only have an extraordinary lasting freshness of colour, but they also served a purpose of being able to survive fires, a worry during the 17th and 18th century. By 1770, most of the basilica’s altarpieces by artist such as Raphael (1483 – 1520) and Guido Reni (1575 – 1642) had been successfully copied in mosaic. One observer wrote: `The popes have established at the Vatican a manufacture where are executed, as at the Gobelins, prodigious work. One is well advised there to reproduce the works of the most celebrated masters under the pretext, however honourable, of conserving for posterity the chefs-d’oeuvre which a fire could so easily destroy. Raphael, Titian and the Domenichan are thus ensured eternal life’ (see Edward Didron, `Du Role Decoratif de la Peinture en Mosaique’, Gazette des Beaux arts, series 2, vol. II, 1875, pp.442-459).