Ancient and Medieval Mosaics for kids - what is a mosaic? where are some famous mosaics?

Ancient and Medieval Mosaics

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If you want to get fancy, you can get stones in a lot of different colors, including colored glass so you can get just the colors you want. And you can make the stones very small, so you can make more detailed pictures. Many Roman houses for rich people, especially from the later part of the Roman Empire, around 300 AD, have these fancier mosaics.

Around the time that people were beginning to build big Christian churches, in the 300's AD, they also began to decorate the walls of these churches with mosaics. These wall mosaics generally have gold backgrounds (not really gold, but gold-colored glass). In the Roman Empire, in what's now Greece and Turkey, people kept on making these church mosaics right up to the 1400's, and people in Europe also decorated churches with mosaics until about 1300 AD.

To find out more about mosaics, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:

Mosaics (Step-By-Step Children's Crafts Series), by Michelle Powell (2001). How to make your own mosaics using easily available materials, for kids.

Ancient Mosaics, by Roger Ling (1998). A look not only at the mosaics themselves, but also why people made them, who made them, and how.

First page of Mosaics
Cathedrals
Fresco painting
Marble
Roman houses
Main Art Page

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