Mosaic of the Lady of Carthage

Lady of Carthage (Detail)

Second quarter of the fifth century A.-D.

Byzantine epoch..

Mosaics..

Shot by: Raafat Reda Ahmed- 

at Carthage National Museum, Tunis, Tunisia.

The mosaic of the Lady of Carthage is a Roman or Byzantine mosaic discovered on the archaeological site of Carthage, during excavations carried out in 1953 on the hill of Sayda in carthage near Tunis. Difficult to interpret because of a context largely unknown, the work, of a "remarkable precision of execution" according to the tunisian art historian Mohamed Yacoub, is preserved in the national museum of Carthage and constitutes the one of the jewels.

Lady of Carthage (overview)

Second quarter of the fifth century A.-D.

Byzantine epoch..

Mosaics..

Shot by: Raafat Reda Ahmed- at Carthage National Museum, Tunis, Tunisia.

The mosaic was discovered in 1953 in a late period villa excavated on the occasion of the urbanization of the district. However, it is complex to specify the dating because the villa could not be searched in full, the neighborhood of Sayda still largely unknown. The dating of the work oscillates between the vandal era and the Byzantine reconquest, and can not be earlier than the second quarter of the fifth century. Other authors evoke the fifth century without further precision, even placing it in the second half of this century as Mohamed Yacoub. Supporters of the hypothesis of a representation of Empress Theodora date the work of the sixth century.

Theodora represented on a mosaic of the Basilica of Saint Vital of Ravenna, 547 AD.

 Italy. UNESCO World heritage site.

Photo by: Petar Milošević, Wikipedia.

The painting was the emblema (tableau) of a larger mosaic and measures 1.08 meters by 1.024. The tesserae are in marble and glass, green, yellow and white. Although the painting has lost tesserae, the whole is relatively well preserved. The remainder of the mosaic consisted of alternately open roses and buttons.

The central painting is located in a frame on a red background in which are alternated diamonds and circles, with also pearls.

The character is presented in the form of a bust. The head, with a feminine headdress with a diadem, is surrounded by a gray halo and has long earrings. The eyes of the character are very large1 and fix the spectator. The clothes are male: the person is dressed in a yellow tunic and a purple coat tied on the shoulder by a fibula; she holds in her left hand a long scepter with a ball at its extremity; two fingers (the middle finger) of her right hand are stretched while the others are folded, by a sign of blessing.

The mosaic is original in relation to the discoveries of Carthage dating from the same period, and we can relate the work of the works made in the East. The emblema could be imported from this region or made by artisans from this region.

The painting is regarded by most scholars as the portrait of a Byzantine empress, Theodora. However, the fact of treading the imperial portrait could be considered as an obstacle to this interpretation, just as the absence of a fibula specific to the imperial family.

Some historians consider that the character is a Byzantine angel even if the absence of wings and the difficult sexual identification do not plead in this direction.

This complex sexual identification seems to have to argue in favor of a personification even an allegory, perhaps a representation of the city of Carthage itself.

The absence of an obvious religious sign on the work is symptomatic of a time when Christianity has not yet overshadowed paganism, and where ambiguity remains.

The character, melancholy and grave, is a major piece of late-modernist mosaic art. Late Antiquity sees accentuated specific characters, including stylization and a hieratic posture.

Sources:

- Mohamed Yacoub, Splendeurs des mosaïques de Tunisie, éd. Agence nationale du patrimoine, Tunis, 1995, p. 360.
- Collectif, De Carthage à Kairouan. 2 000 ans d'art et d'histoire en Tunisie, éd. Association française d'action artistique, Paris, 1982, p. 201.
- Abdelmajid Ennabli, Georges Fradier et Jacques Pérez, Carthage retrouvée, éd. Cérès / Herscher, Tunis / Paris, 1995, p. 115.

- www.wikipedia.org