An exhibition in Ravenna, “Chagall in Mosaic. From study to work” (Chagall in mosaico. Dal progetto all’opera), highlights fourteen major works in mosaic that the Russian-French artist Marc Chagall designed for mosaic between 1958 and 1986 after a first visit to Ravenna piqued his interest in the technique. Chagall’s enterprise is put into context at the MAR (Museo d’Arte della Città di Ravenna) through a complementary exhibition of works that represent the revival of mosaic in this city in the 1950s and through the Biennale of Contemporary Mosaic that demonstrate the liveliness of mosaic in Ravenna today.
Chagall in context: the revival of mosaics in 1950s Ravenna
Ravenna, as you know, is famous for its Byzantine mosaics, headlined by those at San Vitale. These and other mosaics, like those at the mausoleum of Galla Placidia or Sant’Apollinare in Classe, were executed by a group of mosaicists whose names we don’t know, and who were most likely “imported” from Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. As Ravenna faded into the Middle Ages, the technique was mostly lost – the few extant Medieval panels of floor mosaics are charmingly naif. (For more about the history of Ravenna and its Byzantine mosaics, read my article “Ravenna, the power of mosaics”).
A new interest in mosaic technique arose in major European cities at the end of the 19th century, in line with this period’s decorative bent, and in Ravenna, looking at their artistic patrimony with new eyes, they realised that the presence of such an important body of mosaics required competent restorers. Hence the establishment, in 1924, of a dedicated school at Ravenna’s Fine Arts Academy (La Scuola di Mosaico dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Ravenna), where restoration of and fine art in mosaic were, and still are, taught hand in hand. Some of the newly trained mosaic artists worked alongside some of the biggest names in Italian art like Futurist Gino Severini, who played a key role in connecting France and Italy with displays of both modern mosaics and copies of the Byzantine ones.
So Marc Chagall’s approach to Ravenna should be seen in light of this general interest of modern artists and publics in the Byzantine mosaics, and in the city’s new availability of talented artists able to translate cartoons into new mosaic works. In 1954, returning from a trip to Greece, Chagall visits Ravenna, guided by the art historian and critic Lionello Venturi, and meets numerous local mosaicists. He sends his daughter a postcard from Classe (see it here). He had already begun experimenting with the various media that make up the history of the Mediterranean, from ceramic to stained glass.
The men in charge of art in Ravenna come up with the idea of commissioning cartoons to 20 famous contemporary artists, mostly Italian but some international, namely through the Fondazione Maeght, where Venturi had connections. Venturi asks Chagall for a cartoon, writing that “the mosaicists of Ravenna… offer to make your cartoon in mosaic in two exemplars, one of which will be sent to you.” Chagall responds, in 1958, with the cartoon of Le Coq Bleu. One mosaic is sent to him, the other becomes part of the permanent nucleus of the Museo Nazionale, and now of the MAR, alongside other spectacular renditions of the period’s varied aesthetic – my favourites of these are designs by Franco Gentili and Rolf Sandqvist. Exhibited for the first time in 1959, this marks the true revival of mosaic in Ravenna; there is a discussion of the relative anonymity of the mosaicists at this time (craft vs. art) but finally the medium receives critical approval as a modern art form.
Chagall’s mosaic projects
The Ravennate exhibition “Chagall in mosaico” is the Italian version of “De verre et de pierre, Chagall en mosaique” held in Nice (FR) from May to September 2025 and in fact the two shows are a collaboration between the museum of Ravenna and the Musée National Marc Chagall de Nice.
The show gathers an unprecedented fourteen projects for mosaics by the French artist, with sketches, cartoons and documents; it reunites for the first time the two versions of Le Coq Bleu, and is the first time that the public gets to see Le Grand Soleil (1965-7) that the artist made for his wife and for his own home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (it had been dismounted and was restored and assembled for this occasion). Of course, not every mosaic could be transported, so in some cases they are evoked through reproductions. Although there are not a lot of final mosaics here, personally I found the show immersive and immensely satisfying, and the accompanying catalogue really helps deepen knowledge.
The first experiment with mosaic is the Le Coq Bleu, and we see the cartoon, in gouache, displayed with the two versions by Romolo Papa (private collection) and Antonio Rocchi (MAR permanent collection). The first artist to try to translate Chagall into mosaic is Papa, who writes in his diary that Chagall had sent a magnificent painting of a huge rooster but that “certainly it is not the most ideal to be translated into mosaic. Nobody feels fully comfortable dealing with it.” Despite this, he pulls it off and receives compliments from Chagall, to whom this work is sent.
One gets the impression that Chagall provided no instructions beyond the cartoon. Side by side for the first time in the gallery are the versions by Papa and Rocchi who works from the same cartoon just a few months later. Stylistically they are quite different: Papa’s has greater chromatic contrast and is more linear, while Rocchi uses smaller tesserae and colours are less contrasting, resulting in a more pictorial work.
For later works, Chagall truly collaborates with his mosaicists, developing a language to communicate the subtleties of colour and line that goes beyond the bozzetto (cartoon). For the courtyard of the Fondation Maeght, he chose to work with Lino Melano, a member of the Ravenna school who had experience restoring the city’s Byzantine mosaics, already resident in France. He uses musical metaphors: “Lino, you are [violinist Yehudi] Menuhin, I am the director of the orchestra,” he writes. He writes of “subtle shading that contains a message, like in Debussy” and cerulean blue that whistles.
Language and gouache must have been deemed insufficient translators of Chagall’s vision because we start to see collages of fabric in his designs for mosaics. Often, he uses pinking shears to cut the fabric, and the zig-zag of these scissors evoke the edges of square mosaic tesserae. My favourite cartoon in the exhibit is the wide (245cm) and colourful Le Message d’Ulysse, the mosaic of which was created by Lino and Heidi Melano in the faculty of law and economics at the University of Nice. He lets the paper represent the lighter parts of the mosaic’s background, but little clippings of fabric add texture to the gouache in key areas where colour is more intense, and the mosaic translates this to perfection, making me think that this technique was truly effective.
Having Le Grand Soleil in Ravenna is a massive coup on the part of the curators. 39,000 tesserae make up the mural that measures 3.4 x 4.2 meters. The artist, who was nearing eighty years old, had it made for his own home but dedicated to his wife Valentina in 1965, working with Lino Melano. The sun, with nine rays, was symbolic for the artist, representing the nine candles of the menorah and also a new artistic phase of his life. At the sides we see symbols that repeat in Chagall’s work – birds, donkeys, couples, towns and trees. There are two preparatory sketches conserved that contain complementary information, but at this point the collaboration between artist and mosaicist is such that the information is, in my opinion, minimal, to the point that one can imagine the artist directly involved in giving directions over Melano’s shoulder, probably driving him crazy.
Chagall’s works tell stories of his life in exile, interwoven with themes of music and muses, animals and dreams. His mosaics are no different. The body of mosaics described in the Ravenna exhibition show how the prolific artist collaborated with mosaicists on numerous public and private projects, understanding how to best communicate his vision to be translated into a medium best used on the grand scale. Personally, I love the way this exhibition is rich in colour and detail that keeps you looking, moving amongst the cartoons and documents, moving closer to and further away from the mosaics with their multitude of angles and textures.
Visitor information
Chagall in mosaico. Dal Progetto all’opera
MAR – Ravenna Art Museum
October 18 2025 to January 18 2026
Tickets €10
Part of the Biennale di mosaico contemporaneo (same dates); In conjunction with the exhibit “Chagall, testimone del suo tempo” in Ferrara at the Palazzo dei Diamanti (October 11 2025 to February 8 2026)
Also available: a make your own mosaic with a Chagall theme (for adults or kids!) to be booked through Visit Ravenna
*I was invited by the Ravenna tourism board to explore the city’s tourism proposals in the context of the Footprints Project.
