The Un Swept Floor Mosaic

Inspiration for the un swept floor mosaic.

The un swept floor mosaic.

The other mosaic for which sosus is and then was very admired was doves drinking from a bowl below. The unswept floor is a theme from classical mosaics such as one to be found in the vatican. This depicts the floor of a room covered with the remains of a feast including fish fruit and other fragments of food. One can imagine the high degree of workmanship this required to demonstrate in tesserae the metal the feathers and the water in this exquisite mosaic.

In many respects this table top made by arianna gallo of koko mosaico is an unrelated trompe d oeil of ordinary stuff accumulated on a coffee table. The mosaic was found in 1833 during construction work in the vineyard of achille lupi near the bastione di sangallo porta ardeatina see a rome art. Doves drinking from a bowl. The unswept floor a mosaic sosus unswept floor one of the few mosaics master we do know the name of is sosus of pergamos famous for his work the unswept floor which inspired later copies.

Details of koko mosaico. Asaroton or asarotos oikos unswept room is a great term i discovered regarding ancient roman and hellenistic mosaic work. The word is greek but it was a common roman genre in which the floor of the triclinium or dining room would be decorated with food scraps seemingly cast onto the ground from the very dining tables at which guests would be seated. Sosos laid at pergamon what is called the asarotos oikos or unswept room because on the pavement was represented.

The unswept floor that was shown in the photograph on wikimedia commons is actually a small part of a much larger mosaic as this tiny picture of the surviving portion of the mosaic illustrates. Unswept floor mosaic in canterbury. The unswept floor copy of the mosaic done by sosus. This is a video showing the unswept floor mosaic on exhibit at the vatican museum.

For a long time i have been wanting to make my own version of the famous ancient un swept floor mosaic motif. As described by pliny it is a floor mosaic which depicted the leftovers of a meal on a floor. A mosaic from hadrian s villa now in the capitoline museums depicts a group of doves on a round bowl. There is a even a specific greek term for this asaroton.

The unswept floor is a now lost mosaic by the 2nd century bc mosaicist sosus of pergamon. Pliny mentions this trompe l oeil optical illusion in his natural history xxxvi 184. The idea is to give the appearance of real objects littering a floor as a kind of trompe l oeil effect.