Mosaic in the Basilica
Venice · 26 August 2023
Something over eight thousand square metres of mosaic inside St Mark's, laid down across seven centuries and still being repaired. The gold is not paint. Each tessera is a wafer of gold leaf sandwiched between two layers of glass, and they are set deliberately unevenly - tilted a degree or two off true - so that the surface never reflects as a flat sheet. It catches the light in patches and shifts as you walk, which is the whole effect and the reason a photograph of it always disappoints slightly.
The marble columns in front are spoils. A great deal of this building arrived as loot from Constantinople after 1204.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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