Thus far we've followed the story of discovering, uncovering, and restoring the mosaics of the Great Mosque of Damascus. We've also seen how several segments (nine in total) of those mosaics were meticulously copied by dedicated and talented Damascene artists under French supervision in 1928-1929, for the double purpose of documentation and foreign display. The following sample is a color photo of a 348 cm x 296 cm copy of a segment of the huge Barada Panel (34 m x 3.7 m) adorning the west portico. It is a property of the Louvre Museum in Paris.
As previously stated, the credit for uncovering and copying parts of the mosaics is largely shared between Monsieur Eustache de Lorey and Ms. Marguerite Van Berchem. Accurate replicas of the originals (size, color, shade), the copies were proudly paraded across Europe and the New World. De Lorey died in 1953, five years after exhibiting the copies in the USA. They were to visit Edinburgh in 1958 before they disappeared in some storage area in the Louvre. Apart from Ms. Van Berchem, who briefly studied them in the 1960's, they'd been all but forgotten until their "rediscovery" between 1999 and 2009. Second from the right in the black and white photo below is the same mosaic copy in the colored image above, on display in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris between May and July 1931.
The importance of the Omayyad Mosaics cannot be overstated as far as the history of art is concerned; they may very well be considered as the "missing link" in its continuity from the Hellenistic and Byzantine all the way to the Islamic Age.
Loreline Simonis, Les relevés des mosaïques de la Grande Mosquée de Damas
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| Paris, Musée du louvre, photothèque du département des Arts de l"islam |
As previously stated, the credit for uncovering and copying parts of the mosaics is largely shared between Monsieur Eustache de Lorey and Ms. Marguerite Van Berchem. Accurate replicas of the originals (size, color, shade), the copies were proudly paraded across Europe and the New World. De Lorey died in 1953, five years after exhibiting the copies in the USA. They were to visit Edinburgh in 1958 before they disappeared in some storage area in the Louvre. Apart from Ms. Van Berchem, who briefly studied them in the 1960's, they'd been all but forgotten until their "rediscovery" between 1999 and 2009. Second from the right in the black and white photo below is the same mosaic copy in the colored image above, on display in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris between May and July 1931.
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| Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, mai-juillet, 1931 |
The importance of the Omayyad Mosaics cannot be overstated as far as the history of art is concerned; they may very well be considered as the "missing link" in its continuity from the Hellenistic and Byzantine all the way to the Islamic Age.
Loreline Simonis, Les relevés des mosaïques de la Grande Mosquée de Damas
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