Persian low relief from Qajar era in the style of Persepolis, located at Tangeh Savashi.

A relief is a sculptured artwork where a modelled form is raised, or in sunken-relief lowered, from a flatish background plane without being disconnected from it. It is therefore not free-standing or in the round, but has a background from which the main elements of the composition project (or sink). Reliefs are common throughout the world, for example on the walls of monumental buildings. The frieze in the classical Corinthian order is often enriched with bas-relief (low relief). Alto-relievo (high-relief) may been seen in the pediments of classical temples, e.g., the Parthenon. Several panels or sections of relief together may represent a sequence of scenes.

Types of relief

Detail in high relief from the Ancient Greek Elgin Marbles. Some front limbs are detatched from the background completely, while the centaur's back rear leg is in low relief.

There are three main types of relief. The drawing of the distinction between high and low is often drawn differently, and in fact the two are very often combined in a single work - in particular most "high-reliefs" contain sections in "low-relief". Dashes may or may not be used in all these terms.

Bas-relief or low relief

A bas-relief (pronounced [baʁəljɛf] ("bah relief") in French; French for "low relief", derived from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is where the overall depth of a projecting image is shallow. The background is very compressed or completely flat, as on most coins, on which all images are in low-relief.

Bas-relief is very suitable for scenes with many figures and other elements such as a landscape or architectural background. A bas-relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, but stone carving and metal casting are the traditional ones. If more than 50% of most rounded or cylindrical elements such as heads and legs project from the background, and are given their natural volume in the projecting parts, a sculpture is usually considered to be "alto rilievo" or "high relief", although the degree of relief within both types may vary across a composition, with prominent features such as faces in higher relief.

High relief

High relief or Alto-relievo, from the Italian, is where the at least the most prominent elements of the composition are undercut and rendered at more than 50% in the round against the background.

All cultures and periods where large sculptures were created used this technique as one of their sculptural options. Seen in "monumental sculpture" and architecture from ancient times to present.

Sunken relief

Sunken-relief depiction of Pharaoh Ankhenaten with his wife Nefertiti and daughters. Note how strong shadows are needed to define the image.

Sunken-relief, also known as intaglio or hollow-relief, is where the image is made by carving into a flat surface - usually the images are mostly linear in nature. It is most famously associated with the Art of Ancient Egypt, where the strong sunlight usually needed to make the technique successful for images is present most of the time. In the sculpture of many cultures, including Europe, it is mostly used for inscriptions.

Famous reliefs

Famous examples of reliefs include:

• Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Keystone, South Dakota, high relief
• Great Altar of Pergamon, now at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, mostly high relief
• Lions and dragons from the Ishtar Gate, Babylon, low relief
• Temple of Karnak in Egypt, sunken relief
• Angkor Wat in Cambodia, mostly low relief
• The images of the elephant, horse, bull and lion at the bottom of the Lion Capital of Asoka, the national symbol of India (the capital itself is a full sculpture)
• Glyphs and artwork of the Maya civilization, low relief
• The monument to the Confederacy at Stone Mountain, Georgia
• Borobudur temple, Java Island Java, Indonesia
• The Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, now housed at the British Museum, high and low relief.
• Frieze of Parnassus, high relief
• Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, Boston, mostly high relief.

Gallery

Angels from Clonfert Cathedral, Co Galway, Ireland (adjusted to highlight relief)	Yaxchilan Lintel 24, a Mayan carving depicting a blood sacrifice	Egyptian figures in "alto relievo"	A bas-relief at Banteay Srei in Cambodia depicts Ravana shaking Mount Kailasa, the residence of Siva.
Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, 1897, Boston, combining free-standing elements with high and low relief.	Atropos cutting the thread of life

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Relief

External links

• Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, "American Relief Sculpture", Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

• Melissa Hardiman, "Bas-Relief Pathfinder"

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 4 January 2009, at 06:19.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by PediaView.com. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with PediaView.com.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Bas relief".

The URL for this specific entry is:

• http://pediaview.com/openpedia/Bas_relief

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.