Backtrack a thousand years ago, to the XI century. The Magister de Muxe, Master
of Mosaic, had only recently arrived from Byzantium. He was afforded two young
Venetian apprentices who would help him carry out his work for the next
months and years. , and every day they would climb the scaffolding withHe and many of his Greek colleagues had been paid great
sums to travel to Venice
their two assistants and patiently cover the bare ceilings and walls of the Basilica
with little golden tesserae, using a unique technique.
Though language was somewhat of a barrier, the work became clearer every day
to the Venetian lads who watched and learned, although it still required many
hours, days, years of practice to achieve the same skill. Firstly, the Magister
would cover the humid surface with lime, sand, crumbled bricks, then more sand
and marble powder.
Now, with the surface nice and humid, using different
colours he would draw the outline of the figures that were. And only then did he
apply the small golden and coloured tesserae to give them life. These tesserae,
though similar, were not all exactly the same size, nor would he place them with
a regular pattern, intentionally. The angles of every small tessera were slightly at
odds with those next to it. This irregularity created a spectacular vibrant
shimmering effect from the light that entered through the windows.
At night or in winter-time, when sunlight was low, a vast array of candles would
be lit up which added to the experience coming in from the cold damp, often
foggy darkness outside.
For about a century the apprentices learned the masters’ technique, and so by
the early 1100’s, Venetians felt confident enough to create their own mosaics
with their own particular style without the aid of masters from Constantinople.
The technique and the style, however, are so close to the Byzantine mosaics
that even experts cannot tell exactly what period a particular mosaic is from.
The evident changes happened in the 16th century, in full Renaissance, when the
understanding of art had radically changed from what the late middle-ages.
The drawings that were used as models for the new mosaics were done by the
greatest painters of the day, like Paolo Uccello, Tintoretto, Veronese, Tiziano
whose paintings were all about movement, recreating stories rather than
depicting icons. Most Venetians tend to think the newer mosaics are not nearly
as good as the older medieval ones, but perhaps mosaics favour icons of still
figures rather than dynamic images of the Venetian Renaissance.
