Why was the Floor Mosaic made?
Maggie McCracken, Class of 2025, College of the Holy Cross
This mosaic was part of the decoration of a private home. It brought color and design into the room, giving cause for residents to enjoy and visitors to admire it. Based on other excavations, mosaics were installed in different types of rooms, including dining rooms, halls, and more. This pictorial floor served as an display of wealth and symbolized eternal abundance with its vines, basket of grapes, and peacocks. It also served as the flooring in that room. Imagine walking across it in bare feet with the sensation of the cold stone cooling you -- and the room -- on a warm Mediterranean day. Instead of packed dirt floors, or delicate carpets, mosaic tiles also served as a durable and cleanable surface.
When it was excavated in the 1900s, the intact portions were divided between various museums: the Baltimore Museum of Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Louvre in Paris, and of course, the Worcester Art Museum. A Princeton University paper calls the excavation site “The House of the Bird-Rinceau.” The name selected for the site picks out two of the most prominent elements of the border. Rinceau is a scrolling decorative floral motif. The other mosaic sections depict other types of birds, but Worcester’s mosaic is the only one with the majestic, cool-colored, ornate-patterned peacocks.
Nearly a millennium later and most of the way around the Mediterranean Sea, the Spanish Paneled Ceiling is another example of domestic architecture. Both ceilings and floors were commissioned and installed directly into a room as it is being built. Also, both of these the utilize rhythmic floral motifs that appear in many locations and media around the medieval world.
