Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A piece of artwork, such as a painting or carving, that is placed above and behind an altar.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A decorative screen, retable, or reredos placed behind an altar, considered especially as a work of art.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The painting or piece of sculpture above and behind the altar; reredos.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a
work of art suspended above and behind analtar in achurch
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a painted or carved screen placed above and behind an altar or communion table
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The main altarpiece is made of wooden with simple ornaments.
The Meseta Purepecha 2008
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The main altarpiece is made of wooden with simple ornaments.
The Meseta Purepecha 2008
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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 2008
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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 2008
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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.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 15: Tournely-Zwirner 1840-1916 1913
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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 ...
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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.
Bill Bush: What is Worth Saving? This Artweek.LA (November 14-20, 2011) Bill Bush 2011
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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.
Bill Bush: What is Worth Saving? This Artweek.LA (November 14-20, 2011) Bill Bush 2011
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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.
Bill Bush: What is Worth Saving? This Artweek.LA (November 14-20, 2011) Bill Bush 2011
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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 2009
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