CATÀLEG

             MOSAIC  
Banys de la Reina
(Calp, Alacant)

Tessel-les de pedra
h: 264 cm; w: 288 cm
Roman culture
2nd century AD
 

This is a mosaic in which on a white background there is a drawing made up of black tessellations, consisting of a vine that starts from a ceramic vase (cratera); between the branches there are winged genies with baskets in their hands in an attitude of picking the fruit. The ensemble is completed by the presence of an ocelot on one of the branches. The figures do not have a marked outline, but rather it is the tessellations on the inside that form the drawings.
The mosaic was found in the excavations of M. Pellicer in 1965. In the 18th century, J. Cavanilles reported the existence, also in Calp, of a mosaic of similar characteristics to the one we are dealing with, except that the distribution is not symmetrical and that the one he describes has a ratolinet at the top of the floor. It is quite possible that the two mosaics were opposite each other, forming part of the same paving, around a circular structure from which an overhang was built.
CS: 3774
PELLICER, M., 1966.
ABAD CASAL, L., 2002.
CAVANILLES, A.J., 1797.
CAVANILLES, A.J., 1797.