'Yeah, that's my mosaic.'

March 13, 2024 1:01 PM

"Last of all comes the pavement trodden by imperial feet, made of disks of porphyry and serpentine, not thicker than a silver dollar, framed in in segments and lines of enamel, white and gold, white and red, or white, red, and green. The colors are perfectly brilliant. Fancy the deck of a modern yacht inlayed in enamel." from Roman Emperor Caligula's coffee table [CBS]
posted by chavenet (7 comments total)

(coffee cups not included)
posted by clavdivs at 1:15 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

posted by clavdivs

eponysterical!
posted by chavenet at 1:27 PM on March 13 [4 favorites]

Amazing what you can make when you have such concentrated wealth (and awful power). Would have been so cool to see the Nemi ships but - war never changes.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:52 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

This part of the article made me laugh

The Helen in question is Helen Fioratti, an art dealer who owns a gallery for European antiques and lives in Manhattan. She told The New York Times in 2017 that she and her husband, Nereo Fioratti, a journalist, had bought the piece in good faith from an Italian noble family in the 1960s and had no reason to suspect they were not the mosaic's rightful owners.

Mostly because the rest of the article is written to imply it's quite plausible that the Fiorattis exactly knew the provenance of the stolen mosaic. Being in a business that trades entirely in provenance and all.
posted by Nelson at 2:15 PM on March 13 [3 favorites]

Her ex-friend said, Helen, that's your mosaic. Ha ha.
posted by PistachioRoux at 6:23 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]

1960s standards about antiquities trading were different than today's.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:56 AM on March 14 [1 favorite]

Way to include only a single shitty pic CBS! After reading that article its not like anybody would want to actually SEE the table/mosaic
posted by youthenrage at 12:26 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]