Mosaic with a horseman

Featured here because of the similarities with the mosaic of a villa and fishermen in this museum, and with a banquet mosaic in Detroit. Current location unknown. Sold by Sotheby's in 2003 for 27,000 USD.
Date: fourth century AD.

Auction catalogue: "In opus vermiculatum, depicting in minute multi-colored stone and glass tesserae a youth on horseback reining in his rearing steed and facing left, and wearing leggings, short tunic, and billowing cloak, a standing figure with right arm raised behind him, a tunic-clad man bending over at a fountain to gather water in a pail, an empty pail on the ground behind him, another water-carrier receding into the background under a large arched city gate decorated with garlands and surmounted by a gilded medallion between scrolling acanthus stems, a colonnade and temple visible through the opening, a mule-drawn four-wheeled chariot driving along the masonry city wall."

Sotheby auction catalogue December 9 2003, lot 75.

Auction catalogue: "Provenance: Canadian private collection, acquired in 1963. For a related mosaic emblema of similar size and style, with identical black dentil border and showing an outdoor banquet scene, cf. Christine Kondoleon, Antioch: The Lost Ancient City, Princeton 2000, no. 68, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts. It is said to have been found in Ostia with another panel representing a fishing and offering scene. The author notes that these mosaics were 'prepared as independent panels in workshops, where they were set into portable terracotta trays. This small group of emblemata was mostly found out of context, but evidence suggests that they were probably made for walls rather than floors' (p. 184)."