Tile mosaic (drawing a picture from a stone or glass) is taking the East. Small mosaics decorated women’s caskets. The ancient Greeks, and after them the Romans took over and developed this art, reaching its greatest heights. At the beginning of the mosaic used for color shingles. Similar patterns were laid only on the floor. Later, the Romans started using precious stones and poluragotsennye and as smalt (a specially treated glass). On the walls of houses and public buildings appear not only exquisite patterned composition, but the real picture.
Examples of the magnificent works of ancient masters serve as a mosaic with the image in , the Battle of Issus (the mosaic of natural stone are made of one thousand five hundred pieces in a special way – opus vermiculatum, when the pieces of the puzzle are going one by one along the winding linyam). Byzantine Mosaic – this is the height of creation of mankind. Masters of Byzantium made a special elegance to the work, and their panels so far seem to be alive and volume due to the use in half-tones. In the Middle Ages Mosaic continues to solemn procession to the temples of the world, but that Christianity begins to increasingly use the fresco, and mosaic trim minarets and mosques. In Russia, a mosaic of stone came in the tenth century, after adoption of Christianity, but because of lack of the required material has not received a special distribution. And only with the advent in Kiev production of glass smalt in the churches there are mosaics.
