Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A piece of artwork, such as a painting or carving, that is placed above and behind an altar.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A decorative screen, retable, or reredos placed behind an altar, considered especially as a work of art. In churches of the Renaissance period it is more usually a painting of a sacred subject, but in those of the early middle ages it is frequently of embossed silver or of rich gold and enameled work set with jewels, as the famous Pala d'Oro of St. Marks in Venice.
Wiktionary
- n. a work of art suspended above and behind an altar in a church
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The painting or piece of sculpture above and behind the altar; reredos.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a painted or carved screen placed above and behind an altar or communion table
Examples
“The main altarpiece is made of wooden with simple ornaments.”
“The elegant main altarpiece or retablo, a large triptych, is thought to be the oldest surviving work of its kind in Mexico.”
Did you know? Mexico has five of the world's most endangered heritage sites
“Over the high altar is a baldacchino on columns decorated with eleventh-century reliefs; the altarpiece is the famous Pala d'oro (Golden Pall), Byzantine metal - work of the year 1105, originally designed for an antependium.”
“Elsewhere, the large-scale painting of a girl-child is installed as a kind of altarpiece, (the above, clearly, is not an installation shot) with a wooden railing surround and shag carpet designed to suggest gradated steps into the shrine ...”
“It is also striking to note the work was not uniformly Gothic -- as evident by the exuberant Mexican Baroque altarpiece proposed for a Cuban project above, as well as numerous Romanesque, classical and even faintly Plateresque examples.”
Some Images of Early 20th Century American Liturgical Architecture
“Among them is a masterpiece, My Lai, where real human skulls are embedded into a scumbled painterly surface so poignant as to represent the consummate altarpiece.”
The Huffington Post: Bill Bush: What is Worth Saving? This Artweek.LA (November 14-20, 2011)
“Among the visual highlights is an altarpiece by Fra Angelico that depicts St. Nicholas rescuing a sailing vessel.”
The Huffington Post: David Galenson: Art and Money in Renaissance Florence
“Deeply inspired by spiritual art, Waronker strives to infuse her work with the same authenticity and emotion as a medieval altarpiece or religious relic.”
The Huffington Post: Bill Bush: Detritus, Doo-Dahz and other Delights: This Artweek.LA (May 9-15)
“In this show at the Scuderie del Quirinale, with over 50 works that span the length of Lotto's career and the range of his sacred and secular subject matter, reflections of the north are evident throughout; for instance, in the Gothic architecture of the Virgin's stiffly folded cloak as she appears to two saints in an altarpiece from the Asolo cathedral, and in the cold light that shines on the scene.”
The Wall Street Journal: Lotto's Renaissance Rendering of the Sacred and the Secular
“Titian, circa 1520 The patron, a cleric named Malchiostro, kneels behind the Virgin Mary in Titian's altarpiece right, in the Cathedral of Treviso in northern Italy.”
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