The Third Lugdunum Medallion
The mosaic model of this week 9 (February 28 to March 6) is my drawing of the third medallion of the great geometric mosaic at Lugdunum.
I took pictures of all those individual squares last October and started working on them. I am little by little reproducing each design to create models for possible mosaics. I Intend to publish one model a week this year, some will be geometric models, a lot of them inspired by this great Lugdunum mosaic. Others will be more figurative.
Little by little I am building a catalog like the ones I believe antic mosaicists and painters had available for their patrons to chose patterns to decorate their floors and walls. I will actually use them as mosaic models.
This week I bring you the 3rd of them :
The Swastika
Please don’t believe I have the slightest sympathy for modern nazi or white supremacists.
The center pattern of this medallion is named “swastika”. Although today primarily recognized in the West for its use by the Nazi party, this symbol actually is an ancient religious icon of many Eurasian cultures, a symbol of divinity and spirituality in religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
In several major Indo-European religions, the swastika symbolises lightning bolts, representing the thunder god and the king of the gods, such Zeus in ancient Greek religion and Jupiter in ancient Roman religion. This is why this symbol is very often represented in Roman mosaics.
The great geometric mosaic is mostly built out of 4 main colors : Black, White, Red and Yellow ochre, This third medallion only features those 4 colors. I made two drawings in black and white and colors.
LGGM_03 – Black and White
LGGM_03 – 4 colors
I built those drawings using the 2 pieces of software GIMP and Inkscape which you can freely download and use.
You are welcome to use my drawings for your own creations
I can draw mosaics because some guys develop and maintain programs that are free to download and use. These people work hard at this because they love to share, I admire that. And I will share my drawings with you. You are free to copy and use them for any graphic project, mosaic, painting, quilting…
If you do so, it would be nice to mention their provenance, but you do not have to. I would also be glad to know how you used them !
If you need higher resolution of them, please contact me
Stay tuned for the next 32 patterns… And many more ! This is the third model I design after this great geometric mosaic of Lugdunum
you can check on previous medallions here :
