DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20658#0259
MOSAIC.
C4j
of statuary, 8cc. &c. and for this reason demands a very comprehensive knowledge in the artist,
til order to succeed. It is a good practice in this branch to draw the intended scenes by day-
light, that they may be the more accurately designed, and that the painter or his assistants may
have opportunities of examining, at proper distances, the effects produced bv the outline and
other boundaries, before the work be filled up with colour and shaded ; which last part of the
process is best performed, for a similar reason, by candle-light, as it is by this light the scene is
to be exhibited ; and the effects of candle-light on certain colours, blue and green for example,
as well as on the shading, the perspective, the relief of the figures, and other circumstances of
great importance to the intended effect, are too well known to require any illustration in this
place, in theatrical decorations the artist ought, as much as possible, to avoid joining imitations
of nature with nature itself; that is, he ought never to introduce, as component parts of these
decorations or scenes, living men, heroes, or other animals, or real trees, fountains, cascades,
statues, &c. : for such combinations indicate either a depraved taste, or ignorance and want of
genius. -Another point in which scene-painting is often improperly conducted is, when the
landscape, street, house, or other scene represented, does not correspond to the characters and
times of the action carrying on in them. This incongruity is as great an error as any that can
be committed in the dress and appearance of the characters, or in any other branch of the
costume ; and has a great tendency to destroy the effect of the theatrical exhibition.
SECTION IV.
of mosaic painting.
THIS species of representation of objects has had its name probably from its being chiefly
used by the ancients in adorning their museums, studies or cabinets; and vestiges of it are
frequently discovered in this country, as well as every other where the Romans were established;
it is by their writers commonly called opus musivum.
Mosaic painting, if it may be so called, was first performed with small pieces of marble or
other natural stone, cut into parallelopipeds in breadth and thickness resembling a die, but
twice as much in length. These dies, of every variety of colour, were fixed in due order in a
cement applied to the floor or wall of the apartment. The modern mosaic on the contrary is
generally executed with small pieces of half-vitrified paste, of every possible gradation of colour.
The first part of the operation is to have a design or drawing of the intended picture from which
the mosaic is to be copied. A cement or plaster is made of hard stone pounded and brick-dust,
worked up with gum tragacanth and whites of eggs, which is laid thick on the wall to receive
the painting, and onty what is sufficient for the work of three or four days is applied at a time,
that it may not dry and harden too much for use. The design upon paper is then applied to
the plaster or ground, and traced with a sharp point: after which the dies, as they may be termed,
previously arranged in small cases according to their various gradations of colour are lifted with
a pair of pliers, and placed in their due situations, one close to another, the artist keeping strictly
to the lights, shadows, tints, and colours of the original design. The dies are pressed into the
cement or ground, by applying a ruler over a number of them in different directions, that their
surface may become as regular and even as is possible, by which the effect is much improved.
This operation, it is evident, must proceed very slowly ; but when it is executed 3 the colours
3 r being
C4j
of statuary, 8cc. &c. and for this reason demands a very comprehensive knowledge in the artist,
til order to succeed. It is a good practice in this branch to draw the intended scenes by day-
light, that they may be the more accurately designed, and that the painter or his assistants may
have opportunities of examining, at proper distances, the effects produced bv the outline and
other boundaries, before the work be filled up with colour and shaded ; which last part of the
process is best performed, for a similar reason, by candle-light, as it is by this light the scene is
to be exhibited ; and the effects of candle-light on certain colours, blue and green for example,
as well as on the shading, the perspective, the relief of the figures, and other circumstances of
great importance to the intended effect, are too well known to require any illustration in this
place, in theatrical decorations the artist ought, as much as possible, to avoid joining imitations
of nature with nature itself; that is, he ought never to introduce, as component parts of these
decorations or scenes, living men, heroes, or other animals, or real trees, fountains, cascades,
statues, &c. : for such combinations indicate either a depraved taste, or ignorance and want of
genius. -Another point in which scene-painting is often improperly conducted is, when the
landscape, street, house, or other scene represented, does not correspond to the characters and
times of the action carrying on in them. This incongruity is as great an error as any that can
be committed in the dress and appearance of the characters, or in any other branch of the
costume ; and has a great tendency to destroy the effect of the theatrical exhibition.
SECTION IV.
of mosaic painting.
THIS species of representation of objects has had its name probably from its being chiefly
used by the ancients in adorning their museums, studies or cabinets; and vestiges of it are
frequently discovered in this country, as well as every other where the Romans were established;
it is by their writers commonly called opus musivum.
Mosaic painting, if it may be so called, was first performed with small pieces of marble or
other natural stone, cut into parallelopipeds in breadth and thickness resembling a die, but
twice as much in length. These dies, of every variety of colour, were fixed in due order in a
cement applied to the floor or wall of the apartment. The modern mosaic on the contrary is
generally executed with small pieces of half-vitrified paste, of every possible gradation of colour.
The first part of the operation is to have a design or drawing of the intended picture from which
the mosaic is to be copied. A cement or plaster is made of hard stone pounded and brick-dust,
worked up with gum tragacanth and whites of eggs, which is laid thick on the wall to receive
the painting, and onty what is sufficient for the work of three or four days is applied at a time,
that it may not dry and harden too much for use. The design upon paper is then applied to
the plaster or ground, and traced with a sharp point: after which the dies, as they may be termed,
previously arranged in small cases according to their various gradations of colour are lifted with
a pair of pliers, and placed in their due situations, one close to another, the artist keeping strictly
to the lights, shadows, tints, and colours of the original design. The dies are pressed into the
cement or ground, by applying a ruler over a number of them in different directions, that their
surface may become as regular and even as is possible, by which the effect is much improved.
This operation, it is evident, must proceed very slowly ; but when it is executed 3 the colours
3 r being