The Procurement of Tesserae for the Apse Mosaics of Hagia Sophia
Résumé
Inaugurated by Patriarch Photios in 867 CE, the apse mosaic of Hagia Sophia of the Virgin and Child against a lavish gold background does not indicate any material or economic shortages. However, the compositional analysis of some glass tesseraecollected by T. Whittemore in the 1930s and 1940s provides clear evidence for the reuse of Late Antique tesserae, confirming textual sources that suggest the large-scale recycling and reuse of mosaic tesserae in 9th-centur y Constantinople. The decision to make use of older material, on the other hand, may have been pragmatic and based on local availability. There was no primar y glass production in Constan-tinople at the time, and the Mediterranean glass industr y underwent fundamental transformations at the turn of the 9th centur y, which may have caused shortages in the supply of new vitreous materials.