The pavements of the Cosmati (Q1361159)

The pavements known as ``Cosmatesque'' take their name from several families of marbleworkers who decorated a large number of churches during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, most of them in or close to Rome, but others as far north as Pisa. The Cosmati decorated in a distinctive style altars, balusters, choirs, candle stands, ambones, bishops' thrones, pulpits and pavements. All of their decoration was based on geometric patterns, but because the broad area of the floor plane provided a blank canvas, so to speak, upon which designs could be laid at will, it is the pavements which contain the greatest number of mathematical ideas. One of these ideas is bilateral symmetry, which is expressed in the layout of the pavement as a whole. Another is that there are many ways to tile the plane. A third idea is patterns that are self-similar. It is in this last context that we will find Sierpinski's Gasket. Cosmatesque pavements are found in churches with the basilican plan, that is, churches consisting of a long central corridor, the nave, which terminates in a semicircular aspe, flanked by narrower aisles on either side, which terminate in proportionally smaller apses.