A painting that IIRC depicts Alexander in a battle, of which there's a heavily damage later (though still ancient) reproduction of the original that survived, and the other piece was one done on the inside of a shell IIRC.
Let's see if I can find these, because I only know of them from having read an historian explaining the subject of Roman painting and the difficulties with the different sorts of paints they'd use. Ok, the first one is this heavily damaged mosaic of Alexander which was a reproduction of an at-the-time-still-extant painting. Unfortunately I can't find the other piece I was thinking of, nor the original post that I had in mind. I did find this thread that links to pictures of a lot more high-quality mosaics, mostly realistic portraits on par with the much later Renaissance portraitures. That thread also points out that we know of other paintings that didn't survive to the modern era, either by classical references to them (which included discussion of how they were already decaying and fading at that point) or because some of them survived into the Renaissance but were since lost.
I had been aware of that tiny bit of Alexander in that mosaic there but had never seen the full thing, very stunning. Interesting how the depiction looks a bit different than the Apollonian figure we typically see him portrayed as. The portraits in that thread genuinely look incredible, the Roman art I was familiar with was typically very flat and rigid and pretty boring, so seeing something as realistic and beautiful as something that would come out of Renaissance Florence is a bit of a shock.
I wish we brought mosaics back as an art-form, they're pretty popular in Orthodox churches where I'm at but I feel like they have a lot more potential than just a boring portrayal of Saint Whoeverthefuck in a basic static pose. The socialist era mosaics that we have left over are a million times more stunning and animated with like a million colors, they looks really cool.
Fuck man art is so awesome, I wish I had the time to just sit down and study it all day :NOOOOO:
A painting that IIRC depicts Alexander in a battle, of which there's a heavily damage later (though still ancient) reproduction of the original that survived, and the other piece was one done on the inside of a shell IIRC.
Let's see if I can find these, because I only know of them from having read an historian explaining the subject of Roman painting and the difficulties with the different sorts of paints they'd use. Ok, the first one is this heavily damaged mosaic of Alexander which was a reproduction of an at-the-time-still-extant painting. Unfortunately I can't find the other piece I was thinking of, nor the original post that I had in mind. I did find this thread that links to pictures of a lot more high-quality mosaics, mostly realistic portraits on par with the much later Renaissance portraitures. That thread also points out that we know of other paintings that didn't survive to the modern era, either by classical references to them (which included discussion of how they were already decaying and fading at that point) or because some of them survived into the Renaissance but were since lost.
Very interesting, thank you!
I had been aware of that tiny bit of Alexander in that mosaic there but had never seen the full thing, very stunning. Interesting how the depiction looks a bit different than the Apollonian figure we typically see him portrayed as. The portraits in that thread genuinely look incredible, the Roman art I was familiar with was typically very flat and rigid and pretty boring, so seeing something as realistic and beautiful as something that would come out of Renaissance Florence is a bit of a shock.
I wish we brought mosaics back as an art-form, they're pretty popular in Orthodox churches where I'm at but I feel like they have a lot more potential than just a boring portrayal of Saint Whoeverthefuck in a basic static pose. The socialist era mosaics that we have left over are a million times more stunning and animated with like a million colors, they looks really cool.
Fuck man art is so awesome, I wish I had the time to just sit down and study it all day :NOOOOO: