The Fourth Lugdunum Medallion
The mosaic model of this week 12 (March 21 to March 27) is my drawing of the 4th medallion of the great geometric mosaic at Lugdunum.
The great Lugdunum mosaic hosted in Gallo-Roman museum at the top of the Fourviere Hill above the old town of Lyon.
I took pictures of all those individual squares (there are 36 of them) last October and started reproducing their designs 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, like the one I published on Week 10, inspired by a 6th century mosaic of a Gazelle from Qasr Lybya
Little by little I am building a catalog of drawings. I believe antic mosaicists and painters had models like this 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 4th Lugdunum medallion :
Four basic colors of Roman Mosaics
Basic colors of Roman mosaics are :
- Black
- White
- Red
- Yellow
Generally they happened in that order : If the mosaicist would use only 2 colors, they were Black and White; 3 colors, Black, White and Red; 4 colors : Black, White, Red and Yellow.
These are general rules. Most of the time, the mosaicists sourced their stones no more than 100 km around the place they would build their mosaics, so they would use whatever was available to them, Blacks tended to be dark grey, and whites were more like crema.
On this 4th medallion, the mosaicist used a 5th color, a bluish grey possibly sourced from the mounds of Beaujolais North West of Lyon.
I made two drawings in black and white and in 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 4th model I design after this great geometric mosaic of Lugdunum.
you can check on previous medallions here :
