User:Danielhur01/Alexander Mosaic

Alexander and Darius
In addition, the mosaic shows the exact moment that the Persian king turns to leave after hearing the Greek general Alexander's order to do so. At this precise moment, Darius is making the order because the Persian spears are still pointed in the direction of the Greeks, and the king is riding in a chariot being wheeled around.

The Alexander Mosaic in the History of the House
The House of the Faun at Pompeii was immediately recognized by its size and decoration as one of the town’s most important houses. Adolf Hoffmann argues that the House of the Faun was constructed in two principal phases.

The first phase was distinctive from the second that Hoffmann refers to it as the "first House of the Faun" and has recently attempted a reconstruction. In the first half-or at latest by the middle of the second century B.C., the two atria (from image: 27 and 7) and the first peristyle (from image: 36, originally in the Doric order) were constructed. Another distinctive feature of this first phase was the absence, from the north side of the first peristyle, of the Alexander Mosaic and its exedra (37). A large room, underlying the later rooms to the east of the Alexander exedra (from image: 42, 38, and 43), served the first peristyle as its principal exedra during this first phase. Overall, the first incarnation of the House of the Faun dated back to ca. 180 B.C.E., occupied two-thirds of the insula and consisted of two atria, one small house and one peristyle.

According to Hoffmann, the Alexander exedra was not originally part of the layout of the first peristyle. Hoffmann has observed that the first peristyle, originally built in the Doric order, belongs to the earliest phase of the house. The layout of the first peristyle is the key to the house's design, in both practice and theory. The first peristyle dominates the house not only visually and functionally, but it also commands the design, determining the locations and the dimensions of the other major parts. The room is so strategically placed that it would not be an exaggeration to say that the rest of the house had been designed and built around the site with the great treasure of mosaic art set in its floor.

Next, Hoffmann argues, the second House of the Faun commenced through an extensive rebuilding and renovating of the first house. The first peristyle (36) was "refashioned in the Ionic order and was reconstructed into a new peristyle. The Alexander exedra with the Alexander Mosaic (37) was constructed, facing south, onto the first peristyle. A major renovation phase beginning ca. 110 B.C.E. and ending ca. 75 B.C.E., comprised a new decoration in the so-called First Style (including all the well-known mosaic pavements), as well as the insertion of a second entrance into the tetrastyle atrium, a switch from Doric to Ionic in the portico of the small peristyle, and the construction of the large north peristyle.

In addition to the Alexander Mosaic, several other floor mosaics representing Nilotic events and theatrical masks surround the Alexander Mosaic. This piece of art draws from various artistic periods and movements, including Roman, Hellenistic, and Italic. The name of this mosaic comes from the fact that it was found in a period of the Roman Empire known as the "late Roman Republic."

Eight pictorial mosaics were laid in the House of the Faun as part of a major renovation program of the early 1st c. BCE Many of them have iconography linking them to Ptolemaic Egypt like a mosaic triptych depicting Egyptian animals in a Nilotic landscape, fish emblema, a emblema depicting a cat attacking a bird that represents statues with the same theme from Ptolemaic Egypt and emblemas of other animals with Ptolemaic Egypt themes. It has traditionally been held that these compositions were laid at different times, the Alexander Mosaic in ca. 110 BCE and the Nilotic triptych in ca. 80 BCE. This view rests on the observation that the bases of the threshold columns were cut back to accommodate the panels of the triptych, and on a perception that the triptych is technically less accomplished than the Alexander Mosaic.