Mosaics Mirror of Faith

This remarkable volume by Rina Talgam looks at a millennium of works of mosaic art in the Holy Land through a careful analytical and diachronic study supported by a rigorous scientific method. The result is a unique survey of a universe of faiths and cultures in a land rich in traditions and history. Mosaics are considered the principal means for highlighting connections, mechanisms of cultural transmission, and direct relationships between works of art and the buildings they adorn. They also mirror interrelationships between political and religious powers, private and public evergetism, and faith and art. Talgam’s study also draws attention to the importance of technical, material, and production aspects of this art medium, particularly crucial for identifying the organization, the working lives, and the mobility of local craftsmen.

The book is organized in twelve chapters, which are, in turn, divided into three parts that follow mainly a chronological order, and discusses all the floors that have been uncovered so far in the three Palaestinae and Arabia. The novelty of Talgam’s approach consists in comparing inter-regionally stylistically homogeneous floors by means of their decorative elements, composition, and subject matter. The study, however, is not intended to offer a corpus, let alone a full catalogue; rather it deals with iconographic content and context of mosaic production in connection with other geographically and historically related centers.

The first focal point concerns the genesis of mosaic art in the four provinces of interest during the Hellenistic and Roman eras. The evidence, although made up of a limited corpus, does include floors of great artistic value, presumably commissioned by a local elite who might well have been either a Jew or a pagan. The most spectacular pavement of the Hellenistic period is the one at Tel Dor, executed in the fine technique of opus vermiculatum, which, according to Talgam, was probably imported rather than produced in situ (p. 9). Roman period mosaics are well represented by the Herodian pavements, which can be considered as intermediary keys between local traditions and the Hellenistic-Roman style, popular in the eastern Mediterranean, that led in turn to the spread and the establishment of a local mosaic industry. These pavements represent a combination of naturalistic and geometrical styles, as in Masada, Machaerus, the Upper City of Jerusalem, and later in Bet Shean and Caesarea. As has been suggested in recent studies, iconographically they probably imitate patterns of opus sectile or stone-carved architectural decoration.

In the Roman Imperial period, roughly between the Antonine dynasties and Constantine I, urban development and economic growth in the provinces gradually reflected a metamorphosis of taste, showing a wide employment of mythological themes favored by local polytheist and Hellenized pagan elites. In this regard, Talgam offers a close reading of the iconographic sequences of the pavement of the House of Dionysus in Sepphoris, the floors of suburban villas in En Yael and Naḥal Rephaim, urban domus as those of Gerasa (Jerash) and Nablus (Shechem); the Orpheus triclinium of Sepphoris and other examples. It is worth highlighting the extraordinary mosaic of Lod, a masterpiece of late antiquity marked by its high artistic quality, as demonstrated by the author. The Lod pavement diverges from traditional compositions that prevailed in the third century, having drawn inspiration instead from the repertoire of the Roman West and in particular that of North Africa, and evidences the prominence of a shared Mediterranean koiné. Appropriate considerations are also addressed to the smooth and gradual transition between the purely Roman mosaic and the Byzantine art that eventually predominated in the decoration of religious buildings – both churches and synagogues. Favorable economic conditions in the Byzantine era framed considerable building activity, especially in Arabia, above all in churches, monasteries, and chapels decorated with opus tessellatum. In fact, the market for mosaics changed: they were no longer an elite medium but became accessible to all communities even in remote...