“Lighting and Byzantine Glass Tesserae”

About This Publication

Authors	Eva Zányi (Warwick Digital Laboratory, University of Warwick, UK), Carla Schroer, Mark Mudge, Alan Chalmers (Warwick Digital Laboratory, University of Warwick, UK)
Presented at	EVA London 2007, Electronic Information, the Visual Arts and Beyond
Date and Location	July 11-13, 2007, London, England
PDF File	Download (211 KB PDF)

Abstract

A key component of many Byzantine churches was the mosaics on the curved walls and ceilings, which included gold and silver glass tesserae. As the viewer or the light moved within the church, these tesserae sparkled. In this paper we describe how we captured a Polynomial Texture Map of the apse mosaic at the Angeloktisti Church at Kiti, Cyprus and used it to investigate how the position of the lighting may have affected the appearance of the mosaic. Our study showed that the appearance of the mosaics is indeed significantly different when lit from various directions.