For too long, ancient mosaics have been the stepchild of histories of ancient art, although they exist in countless numbers from all over the Empire, contribute substantially to the décor of the buildings, both public and private, in which they occur, and constitute an extraordinary repertory of ornamental and figurative motifs. For several decades, however, under the leadership of Henri Stern and his many colleagues and successors in Europe and America, there has appeared an extensive, if largely descriptive, archaeological and art-historical literature, especially on Roman mosaics, whose disparate character is fully revealed in the publications of the various congresses on Greco-Roman mosaics and in the annual Bulletin of the Association Internationale pour l’étude de la Mosaïque Antique, the organization dedicated to the study of ancient mosaics. Dry archaeological reports of excavated sites, schematic repertories of ornamental framing motifs, monographic treatments of rich ensembles from Antioch, or Piazza Armerina, or North Africa, and topical studies of programs of thematic or iconographically charged subjects, such as the Seasons or Dionysiac representations, have altogether enriched the scholarly literature. But for the small book by Roger Ling, Ancient Mosaics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), intended for students, there has been, until now, no comprehensive, synthetic treatment of this magnificent, well-preserved, but neglected medium of art. Katherine Dunbabin, a recognized authority, has provided us with a comprehensive overview documented by well-chosen, if dark, illustrations, a useful glossary of ornamental patterns, but too few plans and insufficient reconstructions of the architectural context of mosaics. The last is especially important in establishing the potential visual and programmatic connections from one area of mosaic decoration to another within a built environment.

Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World is essentially a handbook and, like most handbooks, is expository in character rather than interpretatively venturesome. In Part I (5–268), Dunbabin systematically describes the historical and regional development of the medium from its fifth or fourth century origins as pebble mosaics in the Greek world, to the invention of tessellated floor mosaics in Hellenistic times, to the colorful splendors of Roman imperial work, including the encroachment of mosaics onto walls and vaults, and to the ultimate dominance of opus sectile floor and wall inlays of costly pieces of cut stone in Late Antiquity. The bulk of Part I has been given over to the presentation of the particularities of mosaic use, placement, and design by region around the ancient world; implicit in this treatment are categorical assumptions about the nature of local practice and the employment of discrete design repertories whose stylistic character and identity have been necessarily derived from an observation of extant monuments, given the near absence of contemporary textual evidence. Perhaps the ancient mosaic workshops with their working capital in designs were more mobile than evident in this compartmentalization of the surviving monuments.

Part II, “Techniques and Production” (269–326), offers her more general observations on craftsmen and their workshops, on the technique and procedures for the making and laying out of the mosaics, on the varieties of the repertory, on the context and function of their inclusion in architecture, and finally on patronage issues touched upon in the earlier chronological and geographical section of this volume but less synthetically. Even in Part II, one senses a reluctance to pursue these issues in greater depth, especially with reference to the function of mosaics in their surroundings and their effect, intentional or otherwise, on the patron or spectating passerby. Dunbabin’s conclusion (327–330) reiterates her belief in the dependence of mosaic on other media, including painting and textile design. Such a dependence may be evident in the pictorial character of movable emblemata: distinct, enframed panels, often centrally located in a mosaic field and dominated by figural representations. One here is reminded of the old argument that the figural panels in Pompeian wall-painting were dependent on (lost) Greek panel painting, as if the Roman adaptation were either invisible or of no significance in spite of the clear exercise of choice. Of greater interest in the consideration of these emblemata is the apparent three-dimensional character of so many of these perspectival compositions, set on the floor beneath the spectator’s feet, as if the floor were visually unstable, even more so if the patterns of the enframing, ornamental mosaics were also seen to be in flexible movement, their position shifting, apparently, above and behind the floor surface.

Dunbabin does address the significance of the observed change in chromatic effects, not merely in the growing size of the individual tesserae and in the increasingly rhythmic patterns of their application in the mosaic field, but also in the progressive distancing from “pictorial” to “optical” effects. This departure from illusion is consistent with other developments in Late Antique art, especially with respect to the renewed emphasis on a charged surface. Indeed, in her conclusion Dunbabin acknowledges the problematic of the ancient medium as a struggle between the mosaicists’ tendency to imitate painting, contrary to the material nature of their medium, and their gradual emancipation from that dependence in the invention of design solutions and techniques better suited to their stony medium, which is so different from paint. A dose of Alois Riegl’s Late Roman Art Industry would have enriched her analysis of this phenomenon.

A handbook is supposed to offer a detailed, well-documented, up-to-date corpus of material, as complete as possible and arranged in such a way as to define the present state of the field under review, and to provide the basis for further study. Dunbabin has met that requirement reasonably well, although a less fragmented presentation of her subject and better reproduced illustrations would have improved the reader’s grasp of ancient mosaics as a special art form. What remains is for others to respond to the splendor of these ancient works of art, which in spite of their evident cost seemed to have gratified a sensibility ever more attuned to the rewards of visual delight, effected by the coloration of the ancient environments that they adorned and through which the beholder moved. For a Roman to step on and over such colorful fields, to be surrounded on walls and vaults by gleaming tesserae whose faceted surfaces glinted with flashing light, must have been a movable feast for the eyes. One would have liked to learn more about that experience and its motivation, no less real as a part of art history than the materials and designs that produced such powerful effects.