Mosaic is a technique in which various fragmented elements (tesserae of smalto, glass, stones, pebbles and other materials) are applied one next to the other to a pasting substance, in order to create a unity or an image.
It was born, around 5000 years ago, in order to satisfy a practical human need: to make surfaces durable and impermeable to water.

THE CLASSIC MOSAIC (5th century BC – 5th century AD)
The Greeks were the first that used mosaic in an aesthetic sense: they introduced the Opus Vermiculatum technique from the 3rd century BC. They cut small cubic tesserae by hand and placed them next to each other to create decorative images in floors.
The Romans copied this technique.
From the 1st century B.C. they began to use mosaic, which is resistant to moisture, also to decorate the walls of fountains and gardens. The size of the tesserae became larger and the space between each tile increased. It was thus possible to cover larger surfaces.

THE BYZANTINE AND MEDIEVAL MOSAIC (5th century AD – 15th century)
With the arrival of Christianity and the emergence of new buildings of worship, there was a need to decorate not only floors but also huge interior surfaces, and mosaics were also used to disseminate religious and political concepts. Large cycles of images were created on domes, vaults and walls. No longer only stone materials (marble or stone) were used, but glass paste, enamel and gold. The brilliance of the surfaces struck by light created reverberations and suggestions that gave the feeling of a union between man and God .In the Byzantine period, tesserae were no longer just cubic, but of various sizes, regular and otherwise, precisely to allow for reverberations and shadows. From the 11th century onwards, with the Byzantine splendour having waned, tesserae became square again.

From XV to XIX century.
Mosaic lost its primacy and importance and became a technique in the service of painting. It was used to reproduce painted masterpieces in more durable material. In the 1800s, thanks to the Romanticism current, there was a return of interest in the artistic techniques of the medieval world, and thus also in mosaic.

From XIX century to the present day
Thanks to great architectural feats (to name but a few: Parc Güell in Barcelona by Antoni Gaudì, Palais Stoclet in Brussels by Gustav Klimt and, for Italy, the projects of Gino Severini) mosaic saw a new season of renaissance from 1900. In contemporary mosaics, the mosaic technique became a means of expression of different creative figures, often in collaboration. Today, it is no longer just a field in which painter and mosaicist measure themselves, the former drawing and the latter making the copy in tesserae, but it is a language used in design, sculpture, architecture and space planning.