I was so lucky to have a client hire me to make a reproduction of this gorgeous and famous historic mosaic of Empress Theodora.

The journey of this mosaic reproduction began when my client contacted me to ask for a very specific and special commission. He had a reproduction of the famous Emperor Justinian mosaic created by the mosaic artist that did the restoration of the mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. He sent me his Emperor Justinian so that I could use him for reference to make sure the glass and stone choices paired nicely.

This was such a beautiful mosaic to see in person. I quickly saw that this mosaic was created by the double reverse method, otherwise called the Ravenna method. Since the mosaic came from Ravenna, this all makes sense! To create Empress Theodora, I decided to use the same method. I’ve never used this method before, so I did some research and purchased supplies. I also made a tiny sample to practise.

First I placed the stone and smalti in bed of lime putty. What you see in this picture will be the front.

Once the glue was dry, I flipped over the mosaic and cleaned off the lime putty.

Then I covered the front surface with layers of tartalan (a fabric like cheesecloth) and bone glue.

Then I made a box to fit, sprinkled marble dust in the interstices, and put a layer of mortar on the back.

When the mortar was dry, I washed off the layers of tartalan and bone glue and cleaned the surface. The process worked perfectly on the first try, but I needed to adjust the amount of marble dust I used so that the mortar would come closer to the surface.

The halo around the original Empress Theodora is larger compared to her head than my version. Since the client wanted both pieces the same size and hung next to each other, we decided to switch up the ratio a bit. Other than that, I tried to replicate the mosaic as close as possible. I purchased Ravenna smalti and even found some antique gold smalti.

I used an Exacto knife to mark the sketch in the lime putty. I kept the lime putty workable by spraying lightly with water and carefully wrapping the mosaic in-between working sessions.