The picture presented shows a tessellated mosaic with different aquatic animals. Its dimensions are 88.9 cm high and 104.14 cm wide. It is believed to have been created around 100 A.C., and it was found in Populonia, Italy. It is a Late Republican mosaic. The mosaic belongs to the British Museum in London.
The object is a mosaic, which would have most probably been located on the floor of the triclinium in a villa in Italy. This one is a tessellated mosaic, which are usually made from small cubes made from terracotta, glass and stone. As artists wanted to imitate paintings, they created these mosaics using material cut in very small pieces with the shape needed. It is important to note that this is not a Hellenistic mosaic, but a Late Republican Roman one. The Romans developed a deep interest in the tessellated mosaics created during the Hellenistic period, and decided to get inspiration from them, copy them or hire Greek artists to make them.
In the mosaic, we can see different animals from the sea. On the bottom right corner there are a lobster, an octopus and an eel fighting. In the rest of the mosaic there are eight fish, each one from a different species, all identifiable and eatable. The artist paid very much attention to the detail; he used the chiaroscuro technique, playing with the lights and shadows, and he…show more content… in Greece, which then was adopted by the Romans. There was a desire to know all the species of animals and how the world around them worked, and to represent that in the most accurate way possible . This was achievable by the creation of the tessellated mosaics, which allowed the artists to depict the natural world in a realistic way, something that was not achievable with the previous pebble mosaics. Paintings were not the only way to represent the world like it is anymore, and therefore the floors and the walls of the houses started to be decorated with tessellated
