The Great Palace Mosaics between Isolation and Context

The famous Great Palace mosaics in Constantinople comprise the most substantial remains of the famed imperial complex. The mosaics are noted for the refinement of their execution and their unusually wide range of subjects. Since their discovery in the first half of the 20th century, arguments have raged over their date and meaning, as well as the identification of the building to which they belonged. Amphora sherds excavated below the level of the pavement in the late 1980s suggested a date in the first half of the 6th century, although this has been disputed too. Interestingly, despite the amount of scholarship on the Great Palace mosaics, none has approached this material in regards to its most immediate context, which is the corpus of other floor mosaics from the city of Constantinople itself. This is partly due to the fact that the rest of the mosaics from the city were overshadowed by the magnificence of the Great Palace mosaics and were considered as “commonplace works of little significance.” Moreover, as products of salvage excavations they survive in fragmentary condition and are usually kept in store rooms, unavailable the scholarly view. Thus, they have been all but forgotten. However, a number of these mosaics decorated major imperial public monuments and houses of the highest Constantinopolitan elite. Naturally, they show similarities to the Great Palace mosaics in iconography, subject matter, and style. This paper aims to offer a new approach to the Great Palace mosaics, attempting to understand this imperial ensemble within the context of earlier floor mosaics from Constantinople.

< Back to Abstracts of Papers