Giovanni Travisanutto’s mosaic career began when he was an 11-year-old boy standing on a step stool to reach the workbench at the mosaic school in Spilimbergo, Italy, and ended with him once again reaching new heights as he stood on top of scaffolding about 150 feet in the air, helping to install the mosaic section that would complete both his career and the original plans of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.

As he sat in the basilica’s pews on Dec. 7, looking up at the 18,300 square foot mosaic, Travisanutto, who founded the Italian mosaic studio that completed the Trinity Dome Mosaic, recalled how he entered the mosaic craft essentially because he had no other choice.