Mosaics of the Hispanic Meseta Norte: Phases, Officinae, Artistic Taste

Abstract

About 400 mosaics are known in the Meseta Norte (today, Comunidad Autónoma of Castilla y León), with chronological variants, most of them of the 4th and 5th centuries; with stylistic variants, geometrical topics in preference to figurative themes; with topographical variants, predominantly rural findings against urban findings; and with technical variants, exceptionally sectilia, only one case of signinum and the rest, tessellati. We know nothing about the mosaic workers, just the signature of one who worked in the Baths of La Olmeda (Palencia): Sil [o]. However, stylistic, morphological, or material concordances allow us to suspect the existence of workshops, which usually operated in regional areas. Surely the former ones were Italic workshops serving people of that origin (opus sectile and opus signinum, Asturica Augusta). Almost two centuries after another officina is documented, known as Clunia-Uxama-Asturica, because it worked in these three cities, and their consequences are still tracked in the late third century in certain domus of the above-mentioned cities. The great mutation of Roman mosaic in the Mesetas occurred in the fourth century with the spectacular display of villas, unparalleled in Hispania. Serving these new customers a large number of workshops was developed, for instance, the designated one as the NO peninsular workshop, which worked in the provinces of León and Zamora; the so-called one as Prado-Almenara workshop, because of its presence in these villas from Valladolid, and also in La Valmuza (Salamanca) where another workshop took part closely linked to some villas from La Mancha. Finally, the Cuevas-Valdanzo workshop, whose taste for the aniconism links these villas of Soria with other more western ones.

Keywords

• meseta norte
• castilla y león
• urban and rural phases
• aniconism
• orientalism