opus vermiculatum

type of mosaic work frequently used in Hellenistic and Roman times, in which part or all of a figural mosaic is made up of small, closely set tesserae (cubes of stone, ceramic, glass, or other hard material) that permit fine gradations of colour and an exact following of figure contours and outlines. The wordvermiculatum(“wormlike”) refers to the undulating rows of tesserae that characterize this work.Opus vermiculatumwas generally used foremblēmata, or central figural panels, which were surrounded by geometrical or floral designs inopus tessellatum, a coarser mosaic technique with larger tesserae; occasionallyopus vermiculatumwas used only for faces and other details in anopus tessellatummosaic.

The earliest known example ofopus vermiculatum,c. 200BC, is anemblēmashowing a personification of the city of Alexandria (Greco-Roman Museum, Alexandria). By the 1st centuryBC, Romans had adopted the technique or at least imported Greek artists to work in it; a number of fineopus vermiculatumpieces from this period have been found at Pompeii, including a magnificent largeemblēmawith many figures, usually identified as a scene of the Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great and the Persian king Darius III (Museo Nazionale, Naples). This work probably copies a famous Greek painting from the 4th centuryBC; with its thousands of chromatically blended tesserae and its complete subordination of the natural properties of the stone and glass medium to plastic pictorial effect, it well illustrates the primary objective ofopus vermiculatum: to paint in stone.

Although its use decreased steadily after the 1st centuryAD,opus vermiculatumcontinued to be the major technique for finer pictorial mosaics in the Roman world until the 4th century. Thereafter the style of floor mosaics changed to a more impressionistic one that took advantage of the crystalline and reflective qualities of stone and glass and was better suited to the coarseropus tessellatum.With the advent of widespread use of mosaic decoration for walls and vaults in the early Christian period,opus vermiculatumwas entirely abandoned in favour of an increasingly impressionisticopus tessellatumthat was visually effective at a distance.

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