Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. See low relief.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Low relief; in sculpture, a form of relief in which the figures or other objects represented project very slightly from the ground. The most artistic examples of bas-relief often present to the observer the illusion that their carving has considerable projection. A bas-relief, or a work in bas-relief, is a piece of sculpture in this form. Compare
alto-rilievo and mezzo-rilievo. Also bass-relief, basso-rilievo, and basso-relievo.
Wiktionary
- n. alternative spelling of bas relief.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Low relief; sculpture, the figures of which project less than half of their true proportions; -- called also
bass-relief andbasso-rilievo . See alto-rilievo.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a sculptural relief in which forms extend only slightly from the background; no figures are undercut
Etymologies
- Borrowing from French bas-relief. (Wiktionary)
- French, from Italian bassorilievo : basso, low (from Medieval Latin bassus) + rilievo, relief (from rilevare, to raise, from Latin relevāre; see relieve). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Pape Moe Mysterious Water," an oak bas-relief, carved by Gauguin in 1894, has not been seen by the American public since the 1920s.”
“While visiting a museum in Mosul, he finds nine papyrus scrolls tucked in the belly of a bas-relief sculpture: they have been perfectly preserved for more than two thousand years.”
“Another piece, "Musique Barbare (Barbaric Music)," an 1893 work in pencil, ink and watercolor, has never been publicly displayed in the United States, while "Pape Moe (Mysterious Water)," an oak bas-relief carved by Gauguin in 1894, has not been seen by the American public since the 1920s.”
“This clears the way for that giant bas-relief of a horned goat head inscribed in an inverted pentagon that I always wanted to see overlooking the Grand Canyon.”
“The Ionic order is more elegant and matronly – think Boticelli's Venus – with often unfluted columns, scrolled capitals, friezes that are sometimes adorned with elaborately sculpted bas-relief and dentils – a row of small blocks – below the cornices.”
The Guardian: Renaissance architecture: how to identify the Roman orders
“Arp's painted-wood bas-relief "La Femme-amphore" (1929), in which a small figurative form, like a kernel, floats through the womb-like bowl of an amphora, speaks to Brancusi's curled-up ovoid "The Newborn (Version I)" (1920).”
“The way that the windows are perfectly placed, or the archways that are positioned down the bas-relief corridors frame and crop the most interesting symmetrical shots from your very own visual space in your head creates this very clean, simple lucid feeling as you walk through.”
“I mean look at the detail of the bas-relief that is carved into a column.”
“To complete the illusion in the eyes of the drunken man, the planks are topped with wooden Ionic capitals, nailed on, and in, I may say, bas-relief.”
“One learns that sculpture went from the three-dimensional to a kind of bas-relief because Christian doctrine disdained natural representation.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bas-relief’.
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Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue's Capitol
vestibule, foyer, mosaic, tessera, tower, elevator, observation deck, rotunda, guilloche, unicameral, legislature, supreme court and 81 more...
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the architect
Urban edifices, everything to do with architecture.
voussoir, faience, volute, pronaos, apse, anticum, nave, portico, piazza, agora, pilaster, caryatid and 55 more...
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