Cosmatesque Moods

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Architects and people who are into history of art know very well the decorative work defined as "Cosmatesque" (or Cosmati), an elaborate geometric style of stonework mainly employed in Medieval Italy.

The name of this style comes from the Cosmati, the Rome-based family workshop of marble craftsmen (12th-13th century) who first came up with these forms of decorations made using differently sized and shaped pieces of stones and glass.

There are quite mesmerising examples of this style: in Rome there is a Cosmatesque screen at the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano and the Cosmatesque works in San Clemente (first two pictures in this post) are intricately astonishing for their colours and geometric forms with white or light-coloured marbles for the backgrounds and triangles, squares, parallelograms, and circles made out of different stones forming the tesseræ.

The technique was employed also during the Renaissance: the floors in the four Stanze di Raffaello ("Raphael's rooms" – check out the third picture in this post showing the floors in the Stanza della Signatura) in the Palace of the Vatican and the pavements of the Sistine Chapel are made using the Cosmati style.

Interestingly enough, the cosmatesque moods seemed to reappear in a modernist key in Fendi's Spring/Summer 2013 collection.

Though mosaics weren't too evident, their geometric figures reappeared blown up in the coloured borders (that at times transformed into Fendi's trademark F) or in the details of the coats, jackets (see also the embossed fur hexagons) and skirts made using thermo-moulding techniques.

Apparently, the multiple lengths of the dresses/coats was borrowed from the perspective of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, yet the colours - eggshell, blue, caramel, blue or orange - seemed to evoke more the shades of the floors than the actual paintings, showing that architectural details can often lead to pleasant graphic results.