Cosmotesque code: to know of meanings ¹⁰³⁶

The art of Italian craftsmen Cosmati, who created unique mosaic production at XII and XIII centuries in Rome and its environments, had delighted people over centuries. The filigree technique of the stonework, polychrome, and diversity of geometrical figures and difficulties of composition demonstrate their undoubted ecstatic value. From the beginning of the 19th century, however, the opinions, that craftsmen Cosmati used not only abstract formation but also enciphered language of symbols, were firstly express. Author of this work investigates style elements of Cosmatesque as sole system, trying to answer on the question about the possibility of existence of symbolic Cosmati language, representing important religious meanings, or this is just the part of art of the decoration of space. In addition, if it exist, is it any possibility to read it. By the starting point of work, there was the writing on the mosaic floors of Cosmatesque in Westminster Abbey, creating in 1272 year, which contains the exact date of the end of the world.

Keywords: intercultural communication, Cosmatesque, craftsmen Cosmati, mosaic, bricklayers, mosaicists, Middle Ages, Medieval Italy, architectural style, Rome, Montekassino, the history of art, terminology, the history of religion, early Christianity, Catholicism, symbolism, semantics of religious symbols, semiotics, semiology

Column: Intercultural Communication and Problems of Globalization: Psycho-, Socio- and Ethnolinguistics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/langt.2016030210