Micromosaic

Micromosaics (or micro mosaics, micro-mosaics) are a special form of mosaic that uses unusually small mosaic pieces (tesserae) of glass, or in later Italian pieces an enamel-like material, to make small figurative images. Surviving ancient Roman mosaics include some very finely worked panels using very small tesserae, especially from Pompeii, but only from Byzantine art are there mosaic icons in micromosaic with tesserae as small as the best from the Modern period. Byzantine examples, which are very rare, were religious icons. The best known shows the Twelve Great Feasts of the Greek Orthodox Church and is in the Bargello in Florence. Another is in Rome and was crucial in developing the iconography of the Man of Sorrows in the West.