Chapter Four - Ekphrasis in Sosos’s Unswept Room Mosaic

Summary

The modern spectator’s first contact with Sosos’s now lost Unswept Room mosaic whets her appetite. Many handbooks illustrate it with a detail of a mosaic in the Vatican’s collections (Pl. I). Decontextualized, this close-up looks like a distinct composition, and it seems divorced from the rest of the mosaic in the Vatican Museums (Pl. II); from its ancient context in a Roman house; and from the lost mosaic in Pergamon on which the whole Vatican mosaic is based. What is more, this close-up contains modern restorations and additions – including its most famous and memorable feature, a mouse nibbling on a cracked nut. Yet it is intriguing. Here, the spectator sees hyperrealistic representations of all manner of discarded scraps from the table, complete with the shadows that they cast: a lobster shell, a crab leg, grapes, grape stalks, chicken bones, sea shells, nuts, and a fig. This small excerpt, then, leaves her hungry for more.