About The Mosaic

When you enter the atrium level of the Robert Woodruff Health Sciences Center Administration Building (WHSCAB, pronounced “wish-cab”), you will be standing in front of a 3-story mosaic depicting the history of medicine. Composed of approximately 2.5 million small mosaic chips, including some 3,000 different colors, the work entitled “Medicine through the Ages: A Mosaic” was designed and painstakingly pieced together by Italian-born artist Sirio Tonelli. Tonelli spent more than 40 years refining his skill in this ancient art form, studying the art of fresco painting and Byzantine mosaics as a young boy growing up in the Tuscany region of Italy . His technique requires that he first draw his images on paper in reverse. Once the sections are mounted paper-side forward, he uses acid to remove the paper. The process is labor-intensive, but dramatic.

Each of the 33 panels depicts great moments and great leaders in medical history, starting with the surgical removal of a piece of bone from a human skull (10,000 bc), and ending with Frederick Banting and Charles Herbert Best, who each made significant strides in the understanding of diabetes. Louis Pasteur, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Blackwell, Moses Maimonides, Hippocrates, Im-hotep, and Marie Curie are just a few of the images included.

John E. Skandalakis, director of the Centers for Surgical Anatomy and Technique in the School of Medicine , first conceived of the idea for the masterwork a quarter of a century ago. At the time, Skandalakis was president of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, and Tonelli had just completed the Cathedral's elaborate mosaics. The medical science history mural was, in fact, commissioned by the Centers for Surgical Anatomy and Technique.