Repoussé, chasing and engraving. 2" x 8" Copper Eagle Bracelet with acrylic highlights.

2012

RELIEF is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise with little artistic effect if the lowered background is left plain, as is often the case. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

BAS-RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief"], from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves* and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves* in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur* Temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor* are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon* temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals—where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques", which may be set in furniture or framed. Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced. These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

* go to my pictures of:

Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom, Borobodur, Prambanan . . .

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I took this photo of the magnificent Statue of Liberty on my first trip to Liberty Island and New York City in October 2004. She is of utmost beauty and I was totally blown away by her magnifigance.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island, New York in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue, and Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

The statue is of a female figure standing upright, dressed in a robe and a seven point spiked rays representing a nimbus (halo), holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand. The tablet bears the words "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence.

The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151' 1" (46.5 m) tall, with the pedestal and foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 m).

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. The Statue of Liberty's obviously classical appearance (Roman stola, sandals, facial expression) derives from Libertas, ancient Rome's goddess of freedom from slavery, oppression, and tyranny. Broken shackles lie at her feet. The seven spikes in the crown represent the Seven Seas and seven continents. Her torch signifies enlightenment. The tablet in her hand shows the date of the nation's birth, July 4, 1776.

Since 1903, the statue, also known as "Lady Liberty," has been associated with Emma Lazarus's poem “The New Colossus” and has been a symbol of welcome to arriving immigrants. The interior of the pedestal contains a bronze plaque inscribed with the poem, which reads:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

There are 354 steps inside the statue and its pedestal. There are 25 windows in the crown which comprise the jewels beneath the seven rays of the diadem. The tablet which the Statue holds in her left hand reads, in Roman numerals, "July 4, 1776" the day of America's independence from Britain. The Statue of Liberty was engineered to withstand heavy winds. Winds of 50 miles per hour cause the Statue to sway 3 inches (7.62 cm) and the torch to sway 5 inches (12.7 cm). This allows the Statue to move rather than break in high [wind load] conditions.

Source: Wikipedia

Bronze chariot inlaid with ivory

Period: Archaic

Date: 2nd quarter of the 6th century B.C.

Culture: Etruscan

Scenes from the life of the Greek hero Achilles

The Acquisition

In 1902, a landowner working on his property accidentally discovered a subterranean built tomb covered by a tumulus (mound). His investigations revealed the remains of a parade chariot as well as bronze, ceramic, and iron utensils together with other grave goods. Following the discovery, the finds passed through the hands of several Italian owners and dealers who were responsible for the appearance of the chariot and related material on the Paris art market. There they were purchased in 1903 by General Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the first director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Monteleone chariot is the best preserved example of its kind from ancient Italy before the Roman period. The relatively good condition of its major parts--the panels of the car, the pole, and the wheels--has made it possible to undertake a new reconstruction based on the most recent scholarship. Moreover, some of the surviving ivory fragments can now be placed with reasonable certitude.

The Form and Function of the Chariot

Chariots originated in the Ancient Near East during the early second millennium B.C. and spread westward through Egypt, Cyprus, and the Greek world. In the predominant early type, the car consisted essentially of a platform with a light barrier at the front.

On the Italian peninsula, the largest number of chariots come from Etruria and the surrounding regions. They are datable between the second half of the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. and represent several varieties. None seems to have been used for fighting in battle. Most came to light in tombs; after serving in life, they were buried with their owners, male and also female.

The Monteleone chariot belongs to a group of parade chariots, so called because they were used by significant individuals on special occasions. They have two wheels and were drawn by two horses standing about forty-nine inches (122 centimeters) apart at the point where the yoke rests on their necks. The car would have accommodated the driver and the distinguished passenger.

The shape of the car, with a tall panel in front and a lower one at each side, provided expansive surfaces for decoration, executed in repoussé. The frieze at the axle, the attachment of the pole to the car, and the ends of the pole and yoke all have additional figural embellishment.

The Materials of the Chariot

Although none of the substructure of the original chariot survives, except in one wheel, much information can be gleaned from details on the bronze pieces, other preserved chariots, and ancient depictions of chariots. Note that a chariot is represented on the proper left panel of the car.

The preserved bronze elements of the car were originally mounted on a wooden substructure. The rails supporting the three main figural panels were made from a tree such as a yew or wild fig. The floor consisted of wooden slats. The wooden wheels were revetted with bronze, an exceptional practice probably reserved only for the most elaborate chariots. A bit of the preserved core has been identified as oak. The tires are of iron. The sections of the pole were mounted on straight branches.

A major component of the original vehicle was leather applied to the wooden substructure. The connection of the pole to the car would have been reinforced by rawhide straps gathered beneath the boar's head, and the yoke would have been lashed to the pole. The upper end of the pole shows traces of the leather bands. In addition, all of the horses' harness was of leather. Moreover, rings of pigskin with the fat attached helped reduce friction between the moving parts of the wheels.

The Monteleone chariot is distinguished not only by the extraordinary execution of the bronze panels but also by the inclusion of ivory inlays. The ivories, from both elephant and hippopotamus, are so fragmentary that only the tusks of the boar and the finials at the back of the car have been placed in their original positions. The remaining pieces are exhibited in a case on the south wall. A series of long narrow strips served as edging, perhaps around the panels of the car or on the underside of the pole. It is possible that other fragments filled the spaces between the figures in the central panel of the car. A major question concerning these adjuncts is the method of their attachment, requiring the use of an adhesive. Another question is whether the ivories were painted.

The Figures on the Chariot

The iconography represents a carefully thought-out program. The three major panels of the car depict episodes from the life of Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War. In the magnificent central scene, Achilles, on the right, receives from his mother, Thetis, on the left, a shield and helmet to replace the armor that Achilles had given his friend Patroklos, for combat against the Trojan Hektor. Patroklos was killed, allowing Hektor to take Achilles' armor. The subject was widely known thanks to the account in Homer's Iliad and many representations in Greek art. The panel on the left shows a combat between two warriors, usually identified as the Greek Achilles and the Trojan Memnon. In the panel on the right, the apotheosis of Achilles shows him ascending in a chariot drawn by winged horses.

The subsidiary reliefs partly covered by the wheels are interpreted as showing Achilles as a youth in the care of the centaur Chiron and Achilles as a lion felling his foes, in this case a stag and a bull.

The central axis of the chariot is reinforced by the head and forelegs of the boar at the join of the pole to the car. The deer below Achilles' shield appears slung over the boar's back. The eagle's head at the front of the pole repeats the two attacking eagles at the top of the central panel, and the lion heads on the yoke relate to the numerous savage felines on the car.

While the meaning of the human and animal figures allows for various interpretations, there is a thematic unity and a Homeric quality emphasizing the glory of the hero.

The Artistic Origin of the Chariot

The three panels of the car represent the main artistic achievement. Scholarly opinion agrees that the style of the decoration is strongly influenced by Greek art, particularly that of Ionia and adjacent islands such as Rhodes. The choice of subjects, moreover, reflects close knowledge of the epics recounting the Trojan War. In the extent of Greek influence, the chariot resembles works of virtually all media from Archaic Etruria. Contemporary carved ambers reflect a similar situation.

The typically Etruscan features of the object begin with its function, for chariots were not significant in Greek life of the sixth century B.C. except in athletic contests. Furthermore, iconographical motifs such as the winged horses in Achilles' apotheosis and the plethora of birds of prey reflect Etruscan predilections. The repoussé panels may have been produced in one of the important metal-working centers such as Vulci by a local craftsman well familiar with Greek art or possibly by an immigrant bronze-worker. The chariot could well have been made for an important individual living in southern Etruria or Latium. Its burial in Monteleone may have to do with the fact that this town controlled a major route through the Appenine Mountains. The vehicle could have been a gift to win favor with a powerful local authority or to reward his services.

Beyond discussion is the superlative skill of the artist. His control of the height of the relief, from very high to subtly shallow, is extraordinary. Equally remarkable are the richness and variety of the decoration lavished on all of the figures, especially those of the central panel. In its original state, with the gleaming bronze and painted ivory as well as all of the accessory paraphernalia, the chariot must have been dazzling.

The Reconstruction

After the parts of the chariot arrived in the Museum in 1903, they were assembled in a presentation that remained on view for almost a century. During the new reconstruction, which took three years' work, the chariot was entirely dismantled. A new support was made according to the same structural principles as the ancient one would have been. The reexamination of many pieces has allowed them to be placed in their correct positions. Moreover, the bronze sheathing of the pole, which had been considered only partially preserved, has been recognized as substantially complete.

The main element that has not been reconstructed is the yoke. Although the length is correct, the wooden bar simply connects the two bronze pieces.

RELIEF is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise with little artistic effect if the lowered background is left plain, as is often the case. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

BAS-RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief"], from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves* and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves* in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur* Temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor* are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon* temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals—where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques", which may be set in furniture or framed. Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced. These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

* go to my pictures of:

Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom, Borobodur, Prambanan . . .

Relief, or relievo rilievo, is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting. There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief /ˌbɑːrɪˈliːf/), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

Rock reliefs are those carved into solid rock in the open air (if inside caves, whether natural or man-made, they are more likely to be called "rock-cut"). This type is found in many cultures, in particular those of the Ancient Near East and Buddhist countries. A stela is a single standing stone; many of these carry reliefs.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices (see gallery). Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

BAS RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief", from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals - where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques" or plaquettes, which may be set in furniture or framed, or just kept as they are, a popular form for European collectors, especially in the Renaissance.

Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced.

These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

WIKIPEDIA

Crown of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (Crown of the Andes, Columbia) c. 1660 (diadem), c. 1770 (arches), gold and emeralds, 34.3 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Learn more at Smarthistory

清 18th Century

The square-sectioned vase is flanked by a piar of gilt-bronze chilong handles, and decorated on each facet at the mid-section with a panel of lotus bloom borne on meandering scrolls beneath a bat suspending a qing, with archaistic angular scrollwork on four corners. The neck has a repoussé band of floral sprays above a band of plantain leaves on the shoulder, which are repeated on the pedestal foot.

33.5 cm high

www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/a-cloisonne-enamel-rectan...

Estimate : $ 10,000 - $ 15,000

Price Realized : $ 10,000

Christie's

Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art

New York, 17-18 Mar 2016

Shaft Grave IV, Grave Circle A, Mycenae. 1600-1500 BC.

National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

Gold male death-mask made of sheet metal with repoussé details.

Once part of a large cemetery outside the acropolis walls, Grave Circle A was discovered within the Mycenaean citadel by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 under the supervision of the Greek Ephor of Antiquities Panagiotis Stamatakis.

The tombs in Grave Circle A contained a total of nineteen burials: nine males, eight females and two infants. With the exception of Grave II, which contained a single burial, all of the other graves contained between two and five inhumations.

The amazing wealth of the grave gifts reveals both the high social rank and the martial spirit of the deceased: gold jewelry and vases, a large number of decorated swords and other bronze objects, and artefacts made of imported materials, such as amber, lapis lazuli, faience and ostrich eggs. All of these, together with a small but characteristic group of pottery vessels, confirm Mycenae's importance during this period, and justify Homer's designation of Mycenae as 'rich in gold.'

Shaft Grave IV is conspicuous by its wealth and size. It contained three male and two female inhumations. Two of the deceased were placed on a north-south axis, contrary to the more common east-west axis. The three gold death-masks are the par excellence male burial accoutrements. One male burial also had a gold breastplate. This grave contained precious gold, silver and stone vases, ritual rhytons (libation vases), either with intricate decoration, or in the shape of animals, large bronze vessels and numerous weapons, including a beautiful dagger with an inlaid lion hunt scene. The deceased were adorned with gold diadems, numerous pieces of gold jewelry, a variety of cut-out foil ornaments, and belts or straps.

Bronze chariot inlaid with ivory

Period: Archaic

Date: 2nd quarter of the 6th century B.C.

Culture: Etruscan

Scenes from the life of the Greek hero Achilles

The Acquisition

In 1902, a landowner working on his property accidentally discovered a subterranean built tomb covered by a tumulus (mound). His investigations revealed the remains of a parade chariot as well as bronze, ceramic, and iron utensils together with other grave goods. Following the discovery, the finds passed through the hands of several Italian owners and dealers who were responsible for the appearance of the chariot and related material on the Paris art market. There they were purchased in 1903 by General Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the first director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Monteleone chariot is the best preserved example of its kind from ancient Italy before the Roman period. The relatively good condition of its major parts--the panels of the car, the pole, and the wheels--has made it possible to undertake a new reconstruction based on the most recent scholarship. Moreover, some of the surviving ivory fragments can now be placed with reasonable certitude.

The Form and Function of the Chariot

Chariots originated in the Ancient Near East during the early second millennium B.C. and spread westward through Egypt, Cyprus, and the Greek world. In the predominant early type, the car consisted essentially of a platform with a light barrier at the front.

On the Italian peninsula, the largest number of chariots come from Etruria and the surrounding regions. They are datable between the second half of the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. and represent several varieties. None seems to have been used for fighting in battle. Most came to light in tombs; after serving in life, they were buried with their owners, male and also female.

The Monteleone chariot belongs to a group of parade chariots, so called because they were used by significant individuals on special occasions. They have two wheels and were drawn by two horses standing about forty-nine inches (122 centimeters) apart at the point where the yoke rests on their necks. The car would have accommodated the driver and the distinguished passenger.

The shape of the car, with a tall panel in front and a lower one at each side, provided expansive surfaces for decoration, executed in repoussé. The frieze at the axle, the attachment of the pole to the car, and the ends of the pole and yoke all have additional figural embellishment.

The Materials of the Chariot

Although none of the substructure of the original chariot survives, except in one wheel, much information can be gleaned from details on the bronze pieces, other preserved chariots, and ancient depictions of chariots. Note that a chariot is represented on the proper left panel of the car.

The preserved bronze elements of the car were originally mounted on a wooden substructure. The rails supporting the three main figural panels were made from a tree such as a yew or wild fig. The floor consisted of wooden slats. The wooden wheels were revetted with bronze, an exceptional practice probably reserved only for the most elaborate chariots. A bit of the preserved core has been identified as oak. The tires are of iron. The sections of the pole were mounted on straight branches.

A major component of the original vehicle was leather applied to the wooden substructure. The connection of the pole to the car would have been reinforced by rawhide straps gathered beneath the boar's head, and the yoke would have been lashed to the pole. The upper end of the pole shows traces of the leather bands. In addition, all of the horses' harness was of leather. Moreover, rings of pigskin with the fat attached helped reduce friction between the moving parts of the wheels.

The Monteleone chariot is distinguished not only by the extraordinary execution of the bronze panels but also by the inclusion of ivory inlays. The ivories, from both elephant and hippopotamus, are so fragmentary that only the tusks of the boar and the finials at the back of the car have been placed in their original positions. The remaining pieces are exhibited in a case on the south wall. A series of long narrow strips served as edging, perhaps around the panels of the car or on the underside of the pole. It is possible that other fragments filled the spaces between the figures in the central panel of the car. A major question concerning these adjuncts is the method of their attachment, requiring the use of an adhesive. Another question is whether the ivories were painted.

The Figures on the Chariot

The iconography represents a carefully thought-out program. The three major panels of the car depict episodes from the life of Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War. In the magnificent central scene, Achilles, on the right, receives from his mother, Thetis, on the left, a shield and helmet to replace the armor that Achilles had given his friend Patroklos, for combat against the Trojan Hektor. Patroklos was killed, allowing Hektor to take Achilles' armor. The subject was widely known thanks to the account in Homer's Iliad and many representations in Greek art. The panel on the left shows a combat between two warriors, usually identified as the Greek Achilles and the Trojan Memnon. In the panel on the right, the apotheosis of Achilles shows him ascending in a chariot drawn by winged horses.

The subsidiary reliefs partly covered by the wheels are interpreted as showing Achilles as a youth in the care of the centaur Chiron and Achilles as a lion felling his foes, in this case a stag and a bull.

The central axis of the chariot is reinforced by the head and forelegs of the boar at the join of the pole to the car. The deer below Achilles' shield appears slung over the boar's back. The eagle's head at the front of the pole repeats the two attacking eagles at the top of the central panel, and the lion heads on the yoke relate to the numerous savage felines on the car.

While the meaning of the human and animal figures allows for various interpretations, there is a thematic unity and a Homeric quality emphasizing the glory of the hero.

The Artistic Origin of the Chariot

The three panels of the car represent the main artistic achievement. Scholarly opinion agrees that the style of the decoration is strongly influenced by Greek art, particularly that of Ionia and adjacent islands such as Rhodes. The choice of subjects, moreover, reflects close knowledge of the epics recounting the Trojan War. In the extent of Greek influence, the chariot resembles works of virtually all media from Archaic Etruria. Contemporary carved ambers reflect a similar situation.

The typically Etruscan features of the object begin with its function, for chariots were not significant in Greek life of the sixth century B.C. except in athletic contests. Furthermore, iconographical motifs such as the winged horses in Achilles' apotheosis and the plethora of birds of prey reflect Etruscan predilections. The repoussé panels may have been produced in one of the important metal-working centers such as Vulci by a local craftsman well familiar with Greek art or possibly by an immigrant bronze-worker. The chariot could well have been made for an important individual living in southern Etruria or Latium. Its burial in Monteleone may have to do with the fact that this town controlled a major route through the Appenine Mountains. The vehicle could have been a gift to win favor with a powerful local authority or to reward his services.

Beyond discussion is the superlative skill of the artist. His control of the height of the relief, from very high to subtly shallow, is extraordinary. Equally remarkable are the richness and variety of the decoration lavished on all of the figures, especially those of the central panel. In its original state, with the gleaming bronze and painted ivory as well as all of the accessory paraphernalia, the chariot must have been dazzling.

The Reconstruction

After the parts of the chariot arrived in the Museum in 1903, they were assembled in a presentation that remained on view for almost a century. During the new reconstruction, which took three years' work, the chariot was entirely dismantled. A new support was made according to the same structural principles as the ancient one would have been. The reexamination of many pieces has allowed them to be placed in their correct positions. Moreover, the bronze sheathing of the pole, which had been considered only partially preserved, has been recognized as substantially complete.

The main element that has not been reconstructed is the yoke. Although the length is correct, the wooden bar simply connects the two bronze pieces.

RELIEF is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise with little artistic effect if the lowered background is left plain, as is often the case. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

BAS-RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief"], from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves* and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves* in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur* Temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor* are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon* temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals—where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques", which may be set in furniture or framed. Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced. These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

* go to my pictures of:

Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom, Borobodur, Prambanan . . .

Bronze chariot inlaid with ivory

Period: Archaic

Date: 2nd quarter of the 6th century B.C.

Culture: Etruscan

Scenes from the life of the Greek hero Achilles

The Acquisition

In 1902, a landowner working on his property accidentally discovered a subterranean built tomb covered by a tumulus (mound). His investigations revealed the remains of a parade chariot as well as bronze, ceramic, and iron utensils together with other grave goods. Following the discovery, the finds passed through the hands of several Italian owners and dealers who were responsible for the appearance of the chariot and related material on the Paris art market. There they were purchased in 1903 by General Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the first director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Monteleone chariot is the best preserved example of its kind from ancient Italy before the Roman period. The relatively good condition of its major parts--the panels of the car, the pole, and the wheels--has made it possible to undertake a new reconstruction based on the most recent scholarship. Moreover, some of the surviving ivory fragments can now be placed with reasonable certitude.

The Form and Function of the Chariot

Chariots originated in the Ancient Near East during the early second millennium B.C. and spread westward through Egypt, Cyprus, and the Greek world. In the predominant early type, the car consisted essentially of a platform with a light barrier at the front.

On the Italian peninsula, the largest number of chariots come from Etruria and the surrounding regions. They are datable between the second half of the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. and represent several varieties. None seems to have been used for fighting in battle. Most came to light in tombs; after serving in life, they were buried with their owners, male and also female.

The Monteleone chariot belongs to a group of parade chariots, so called because they were used by significant individuals on special occasions. They have two wheels and were drawn by two horses standing about forty-nine inches (122 centimeters) apart at the point where the yoke rests on their necks. The car would have accommodated the driver and the distinguished passenger.

The shape of the car, with a tall panel in front and a lower one at each side, provided expansive surfaces for decoration, executed in repoussé. The frieze at the axle, the attachment of the pole to the car, and the ends of the pole and yoke all have additional figural embellishment.

The Materials of the Chariot

Although none of the substructure of the original chariot survives, except in one wheel, much information can be gleaned from details on the bronze pieces, other preserved chariots, and ancient depictions of chariots. Note that a chariot is represented on the proper left panel of the car.

The preserved bronze elements of the car were originally mounted on a wooden substructure. The rails supporting the three main figural panels were made from a tree such as a yew or wild fig. The floor consisted of wooden slats. The wooden wheels were revetted with bronze, an exceptional practice probably reserved only for the most elaborate chariots. A bit of the preserved core has been identified as oak. The tires are of iron. The sections of the pole were mounted on straight branches.

A major component of the original vehicle was leather applied to the wooden substructure. The connection of the pole to the car would have been reinforced by rawhide straps gathered beneath the boar's head, and the yoke would have been lashed to the pole. The upper end of the pole shows traces of the leather bands. In addition, all of the horses' harness was of leather. Moreover, rings of pigskin with the fat attached helped reduce friction between the moving parts of the wheels.

The Monteleone chariot is distinguished not only by the extraordinary execution of the bronze panels but also by the inclusion of ivory inlays. The ivories, from both elephant and hippopotamus, are so fragmentary that only the tusks of the boar and the finials at the back of the car have been placed in their original positions. The remaining pieces are exhibited in a case on the south wall. A series of long narrow strips served as edging, perhaps around the panels of the car or on the underside of the pole. It is possible that other fragments filled the spaces between the figures in the central panel of the car. A major question concerning these adjuncts is the method of their attachment, requiring the use of an adhesive. Another question is whether the ivories were painted.

The Figures on the Chariot

The iconography represents a carefully thought-out program. The three major panels of the car depict episodes from the life of Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War. In the magnificent central scene, Achilles, on the right, receives from his mother, Thetis, on the left, a shield and helmet to replace the armor that Achilles had given his friend Patroklos, for combat against the Trojan Hektor. Patroklos was killed, allowing Hektor to take Achilles' armor. The subject was widely known thanks to the account in Homer's Iliad and many representations in Greek art. The panel on the left shows a combat between two warriors, usually identified as the Greek Achilles and the Trojan Memnon. In the panel on the right, the apotheosis of Achilles shows him ascending in a chariot drawn by winged horses.

The subsidiary reliefs partly covered by the wheels are interpreted as showing Achilles as a youth in the care of the centaur Chiron and Achilles as a lion felling his foes, in this case a stag and a bull.

The central axis of the chariot is reinforced by the head and forelegs of the boar at the join of the pole to the car. The deer below Achilles' shield appears slung over the boar's back. The eagle's head at the front of the pole repeats the two attacking eagles at the top of the central panel, and the lion heads on the yoke relate to the numerous savage felines on the car.

While the meaning of the human and animal figures allows for various interpretations, there is a thematic unity and a Homeric quality emphasizing the glory of the hero.

The Artistic Origin of the Chariot

The three panels of the car represent the main artistic achievement. Scholarly opinion agrees that the style of the decoration is strongly influenced by Greek art, particularly that of Ionia and adjacent islands such as Rhodes. The choice of subjects, moreover, reflects close knowledge of the epics recounting the Trojan War. In the extent of Greek influence, the chariot resembles works of virtually all media from Archaic Etruria. Contemporary carved ambers reflect a similar situation.

The typically Etruscan features of the object begin with its function, for chariots were not significant in Greek life of the sixth century B.C. except in athletic contests. Furthermore, iconographical motifs such as the winged horses in Achilles' apotheosis and the plethora of birds of prey reflect Etruscan predilections. The repoussé panels may have been produced in one of the important metal-working centers such as Vulci by a local craftsman well familiar with Greek art or possibly by an immigrant bronze-worker. The chariot could well have been made for an important individual living in southern Etruria or Latium. Its burial in Monteleone may have to do with the fact that this town controlled a major route through the Appenine Mountains. The vehicle could have been a gift to win favor with a powerful local authority or to reward his services.

Beyond discussion is the superlative skill of the artist. His control of the height of the relief, from very high to subtly shallow, is extraordinary. Equally remarkable are the richness and variety of the decoration lavished on all of the figures, especially those of the central panel. In its original state, with the gleaming bronze and painted ivory as well as all of the accessory paraphernalia, the chariot must have been dazzling.

The Reconstruction

After the parts of the chariot arrived in the Museum in 1903, they were assembled in a presentation that remained on view for almost a century. During the new reconstruction, which took three years' work, the chariot was entirely dismantled. A new support was made according to the same structural principles as the ancient one would have been. The reexamination of many pieces has allowed them to be placed in their correct positions. Moreover, the bronze sheathing of the pole, which had been considered only partially preserved, has been recognized as substantially complete.

The main element that has not been reconstructed is the yoke. Although the length is correct, the wooden bar simply connects the two bronze pieces.

RELIEF is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise with little artistic effect if the lowered background is left plain, as is often the case. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

BAS-RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief"], from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves* and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves* in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur* Temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor* are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon* temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals—where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques", which may be set in furniture or framed. Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced. These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

* go to my pictures of:

Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom, Borobodur, Prambanan . . .

Repoussé, chasing and engraving. 2" x 8" Copper Eagle Bracelet with acrylic highlights.

2012

The Garden is composed of three distinct parts, skillfully restored since the 1980s, and is accessible through the Vanderbilt Gate at Fifth Avenue and 105th Street, a quarter mile (400 m) south of the park's northeast corner. The Vanderbilt Gate (illustrated right) once gave access to the forecourt of Cornelius Vanderbilt II's chateau designed by George Browne Post, the grandest of the Fifth Avenue mansions of the Gilded Age, at 58th Street and Fifth Avenue, sharing the Plaza with the Plaza Hotel. The wrought iron gates with cast iron and repoussé details, were designed by Post and executed in an iron foundry in Paris.[3]

Below the steps flanked by Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas), the central section of the Conservatory Garden is a symmetrical lawn outlined in clipped yew,[4] with a single central fountain jet at the rear. It is flanked by twin allées of crabapples and backed by a curved wisteria pergola against the steep natural slope, that is dominated at its skyline by a giant American Sycamore. Otherwise there is no flower color: instead, on any fine Saturday afternoon in June, it is the scene of photography sessions for colorful wedding parties, for which limousines pull up in rows on Fifth Avenue.[5]

To the left on the south side, is the garden of mixed herbaceous borders in wide concentric bands around The Secret Garden water lily pool, dedicated in 1936 to the memory of Frances Hodgson Burnett, with sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh.[6] Some large shrubs, like tree lilac, magnolias, buddleias and Cornus alba 'elegantissima' provide vertical structure and offer light shade to offset the sunny locations, planted by Lynden Miller with a wide range of hardy perennials and decorative grasses, intermixed with annuals planted to seem naturalized. This garden has seasonal features to draw visitors from April through October.

Untermyer Fountain/Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott

To the right of the central formal plat is a garden also in concentric circles, round the Untermyer Fountain, which was donated by the family of Samuel Untermyer in 1947. The bronze figures, Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott (1861-1938), were executed in Germany about 1910 [7] and formed a fountain at Untermyer's estate "Greystone" in Yonkers, New York.

This section of the Conservatory Garden has two dramatic seasons of massed display, of tulips in the spring and Korean chrysanthemums in the fall. Beds of santolina clipped in knotted designs with contrasting bronze-leaved bedding begonias surround the fountain, and four rose arbor gates are planted with reblooming 'Silver Moon' and 'Betty Prior' roses. Source: Wikipedia

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The Magnificent and beautiful lady, the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York City. I was so moved by her stunning beauty and impressed by the absolute perfection of this marvelous representation of liberty. I took this photo of the magnificent Statue of Liberty on my first trip to Liberty Island and New York City in October 2004. She is of utmost beauty and I was totally blown away by her magnifigance.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island, New York in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue, and Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

The statue is of a female figure standing upright, dressed in a robe and a seven point spiked rays representing a nimbus (halo), holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand. The tablet bears the words "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence.

The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151' 1" (46.5 m) tall, with the pedestal and foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 m).

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. The Statue of Liberty's obviously classical appearance (Roman stola, sandals, facial expression) derives from Libertas, ancient Rome's goddess of freedom from slavery, oppression, and tyranny. Broken shackles lie at her feet. The seven spikes in the crown represent the Seven Seas and seven continents. Her torch signifies enlightenment. The tablet in her hand shows the date of the nation's birth, July 4, 1776.

Since 1903, the statue, also known as "Lady Liberty," has been associated with Emma Lazarus's poem “The New Colossus” and has been a symbol of welcome to arriving immigrants. The interior of the pedestal contains a bronze plaque inscribed with the poem, which reads:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

There are 354 steps inside the statue and its pedestal. There are 25 windows in the crown which comprise the jewels beneath the seven rays of the diadem. The tablet which the Statue holds in her left hand reads, in Roman numerals, "July 4, 1776" the day of America's independence from Britain. The Statue of Liberty was engineered to withstand heavy winds. Winds of 50 miles per hour cause the Statue to sway 3 inches (7.62 cm) and the torch to sway 5 inches (12.7 cm). This allows the Statue to move rather than break in high [wind load] conditions.

Source: Wikipedia

RELIEF is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise with little artistic effect if the lowered background is left plain, as is often the case. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

BAS-RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief"], from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves* and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves* in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur* Temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor* are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon* temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals—where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques", which may be set in furniture or framed. Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced. These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

* go to my pictures of:

Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom, Borobodur, Prambanan . . .

The Meyrick Helmet is an Iron Age bronze peaked helmet, with La Tène style decoration, that is held at the British Museum in London.[1] It is one of only two Iron Age helmets to have been discovered in Britain, the other one being the more famous Waterloo Helmet.The Celtic warrior's helmet was often highly decorated depending on his rank.

Unlike the Waterloo Helmet, which bears two cone-shaped horns, the Meyrick Helmet is hornless and may have been partly based on an Etruscan or Roman model. An emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Leicester, has conjectured that the helmet may have belonged to a British auxiliary fighting in the Roman army during the campaigns against the Brigantes in AD 71-74.[2]

Helmet AD 50 – 150, Found in Northern Britain – a copper alloy helmet with repousse ornament on the neckguard – originally the cross hatched studs were covered with red opaque glass.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyrick_Helmet

The other Celtic helmet found in Britain and in same museum is a horned ceremonial one and more well known

www.flickr.com/photos/celtico/4035843427/

copper decorative chasing and rpousee design- Valentin Yotkov class April 2016

...and a demonstration of repousse' by the maestro himself, Jean Wiart.

The repousse' shop is a small room off to the side of the main shop where the forging and other processes take place.

Masseur Wiart made all these hammers.

Sterling silver, fine silver, copper roses with enamel, rose quartz beads, cabs and faceted center piece, pink sapphire briolets. Techniques: forging, repousse, enameling, chasing, patina and the basics - soldering, sawing, filing, sanding.

Crown of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (Crown of the Andes, Columbia) c. 1660 (diadem), c. 1770 (arches), gold and emeralds, 34.3 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Learn more at Smarthistory

Plat de reliure d'Evangile (Gospel Book binding), XIXth cent., Armenia.

Vermeil ajouré, repoussé et ciselé.

Presented on www.le-maf.com

Closed for more than 15 years, the Armenian Museum of France is fighting to re-open. Please join the cause on the museum's facebook page.

www.facebook.com/ArmenianMuseumOfFrance

« La construction d’une fondation au sein de laquelle pourrait se cristalliser une partie du mécénat s’imposait. Un espace nouveau qui ouvre le dialogue avec un large public et offre aux artistes et intellectuels une plateforme de débats et de réflexion », telle était l'ambition, selon les mots de Bernard Arnault lors de la présentation officielle du projet.

Le bâtiment, construit à la place d'un ancien bowling, d'une billetterie et d'un restaurant, a une surface de 11 779 m2 et dépasse les 40 mètres de haut : rez-de-chaussée de neuf mètres de haut, zone technique de six mètres de haut, un étage de neuf mètres de haut surmonté des volumes des puits de lumière de neuf mètres, entourés des verrières qui lui permettent d'atteindre cette hauteur et de doubler son volume7. L'infrastructure est constituée d'une boîte étanche en sous-sol, formée d'un radier en béton étanche qui résiste aux surpressions hydrostatiques et, pour gagner encore du volume, d'un bassin aquatique alimenté par une cascade en pente douce et entouré d'une paroi moulée périphérique en console de 7 mètres8.

Au total, la construction du bâtiment aura nécessité le travail conjoint d'ingénieurs et de plus de 700 ouvriers. Une trentaine de brevets ont également été créés, notamment pour les accroches des voiles de verre soumises à une forte prise au vent. La géométrie complexe du bâtiment a requis de multiples études en soufflerie au CSTB de Nantes, dont les résultats ont permis aux ingénieurs SETEC Bâtiment et RFR de concevoir et dimensionner la structure du bâtiment.

Opposée à cet édifice, une association de défense du parc, la Coordination pour la sauvegarde du bois de Boulogne, a saisi la justice administrative, en attaquant, avec succès, à la fois l'autorisation foncière délivrée par une délibération du conseil de Paris et le permis de construire, finalement annulé le 20 janvier 20111. Pour sauvegarder le projet de musée, la ville de Paris a, sur le premier point, modifié son règlement d'urbanisme. Sur le permis de construire, la ville et la Fondation Louis Vuitton ont obtenu en avril 2011 de pouvoir continuer les travaux.

Par ailleurs, dans le cadre d'un projet de loi sur le prix du livre numérique le 15 février 2011, a été glissé un cavalier législatif consolidant le permis de construire. L'association a alors saisi le Conseil constitutionnel en déposant une question prioritaire de constitutionnalité (QPC). Celle-ci visait ce « cavalier » législatif. Le 24 février 2012, elle a été repoussée par le Conseil constitutionnel parce que la disposition visée « répond à un but d'intérêt général suffisant. »

En 2012, la construction de l’édifice aborde une étape déterminante avec l’installation des voiles de verre. Ces voiles sont constituées de 3 600 panneaux de verre, tous uniques et courbés spécifiquement pour épouser les formes dessinées par l’architecte. Les verrières, soutenues par des poutres de bois et de fer, recouvrent au total 13 500 mètres carrés. Les équipes participant à la construction du bâtiment de la Fondation ont été récompensées par plusieurs prix d’architecture en France et aux États-Unis.

Le coût de la construction, initialement estimé à 100 millions d'euros n'a pas été rendu public. Il pourrait avoir atteint 500 millions d'euros en raison de la mise au point de panneaux de verre innovants.

Le magazine Marianne avance que la construction du bâtiment de la Fondation Louis-Vuitton aurait coûté près de 800 millions d'euros dont plus 610 millions d'euros reposeraient sur l'Etat français grâce aux avantages fiscaux que LVMH a obtenus

Photographed at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in California.

Upper and lower boards made of wood and covered with goatskin, with a rectangular goatskin flap attached to the lower board to protect the fore-edge; two silver plaques have been attached to the upper and lower boards and are joined across the spine through use of 3 sets of 5 silver chains; upper-board silver plaque depicts the Adoration of the Magi in a central, rectangular field, with the figures and decorative elements in repoussé and gilded, with carefully incised details and blue, green, and yellow enamel employed for spatial and decorative effects; outer border is filled with grape-cluster motifs within a green-enamel background and semi-precious gems in the shape of rosettes and crosses; lower-board silver plaque incorporates the same decorative elements and design as the upper-board, but the central scene depicts the Ascension of Christ, with the heavenly background filled in with a marbled white enamel and the earthly background below in blue; inner boards lined with blue linen.

This manuscript was executed in 1475 by a scribe identified as Aristakes, for a priest named Hakob. It contains a series of 16 images on the life of Christ preceding the text of the gospels, as well as the traditional evangelist portraits, and there are marginal illustrations throughout. The style of the miniatures, which employ brilliant colors and emphasize decorative patterns, is characteristic of manuscript production in the region around Lake Van during the 15th century. The style of Lake Van has often been described in relation to schools of Islamic arts of the book. Numerous inscriptions (on fols. 258-60) spanning a few centuries attest to the manuscript's long history of use and revered preservation. The codex's later history included a re-binding with silver covers from Kayseri that date to approximately 1700. This jeweled and enameled silver binding bears a composition of the Adoration of the Magi on the front and the Ascension on the back.

To explore fully digitized manuscripts with a virtual page-turning application, please visit Walters Ex Libris.

Champtocé-sur-Loire (Maine-et-Loire)

Château de Champtocé.

Une forteresse fut bâties sur un promontoire de shiste, par la famille de Craon, dès le XIIIe siècle. Le château faisait partie des défenses de l'Anjou face au duché de Bretagne.

C'est dans ce château qu'est né Gilles de Laval, baron de Rais (ou Retz), comte de Brienne, seigneur de Pouzauges, Tiffauges, Machecoul, Pornic, Bourgneuf, Champtocé et autres...

Gilles de Rais ou de Retz est né à Champtocé-sur-Loire vers 1404. Né Gilles de Montmorency-Laval il sera baron de Retz et comme baron de Retz possesseur de Pornic. Il combattra les anglais aux côtés de Jeanne d'Arc et sera promu maréchal de France, il a environ 25 ans, le jour du sacre de Charles VII à Reims. Il sera disgracié après l'échec du siège de Paris en août 1429 (les anglais occupaient Paris depuis 1420, les bourgeois de Paris avaient d'ailleurs accepté l'administration anglaise par mépris de Charles VII qu'ils appelaient le "rois de Bourges", mais surtout parce que les anglais leur avaient accordé de nouveaux privilèges. Les troupes de Charles VII seront repoussées d'ailleurs autant par les parisiens que par les anglais peu nombreux). Il retourna donc sur ses terres et dépensa son immense fortune que le brigandage (était ce le seul? C'était le temps des "Ecorcheurs") ne parvenait à maintenir. En 1433 il ne lui resta plus aucune terre à part celles de sa femme et deux châteaux en Anjou. En 1435, un édit du Roi interdisait à quiconque de commercer avec lui. Il fit venir d'Italie un alchimiste qui prétendait pouvoir fabriquer de l'or (Franco Prelati), puis essaya de reprendre par la force ce qu'il avait vendu. C'est en essayant de reprendre un de ses châteaux à un religieux qu'il s'aliène le duc de Bretagne et l'évêque de Nantes. (En 1439, Gille de Rais doit vendre la forteresse de Saint-Etienne-de-Mer-Morte à Geoffroy Le Ferron. Contestant cette vente, il demande des comptes au recteur de la paroisse, qui est aussi le frère de Geoffroy Le Ferron. Il entre, à cheval et en armes, dans l'église paroissiale au cours de l'office de la Pentecôte 1440 et brutalise le religieux). Des rumeurs circulaient depuis longtemps à son propos, concernant des enlèvements d'enfants.

Une enquête est lancée et le 15 septembre 1440, Jean Labbé, capitaine de Jean V, assisté du notaire Robin Guillaumet, le

représentant de Malestroi, arrête Gilles de Rais à Machecoul. Celui-ci est enfermé au château de Bouffray à Nantes. Il est suivi peu après par ses complices, Prelati, Blanchet, Henriet, Poitou et Perrine Martin.

Gilles de Rais fera l'objet de deux procès, un devant la justice civile dépendante du duc et un devant la justice ecclésiastique rendue par l'évêque.

Le tribunal séculier reproche au prévenu le refus d’obéir au duc de Bretagne, son suzerain, dans la prise du château, et des assassinats d’enfants.

Le tribunal ecclésiastique juge Gilles de Rais pour hérésie, sorcellerie avec évocation des démons, viol de l’immunité de l’Église lors de l’enlèvement du religieux devenu propriétaire d'un de ses châteaux, et enfin pour sodomie. De nombreux témoignages, dont ceux des parents des enfants disparus, sont cités dans les actes des procès. Les serviteurs de Gilles de Rais confirment les enlèvements. Sous la torture, Gilles de Rais se livrera à une confession particulièrement horrible (Lorsque le juge Pierre de L’Hôpital interroge Gilles de Rais sur ses motivations, celui-ci répond à plusieurs reprises que ce fut «seulement pour son plaisir et sa délectation charnelle»).Les deux procès estiment à entre 140 et plus de 200 le nombre des victimes. Le 25 octobre 1440, les deux procès condamnent Gilles de Rais et ses deux complices à être pendus et brûlés. Toutefois, Gilles de Rais sera inhumé avec les honneurs dus à son rang. Les cadavres des complices seront effectivement brûlés. L'alchimiste Prelati (père Francisco Prelati) sera condamné, mais s'échappera.

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Château_de_Champtocé

Bronze chariot inlaid with ivory

Period: Archaic

Date: 2nd quarter of the 6th century B.C.

Culture: Etruscan

Scenes from the life of the Greek hero Achilles

The Acquisition

In 1902, a landowner working on his property accidentally discovered a subterranean built tomb covered by a tumulus (mound). His investigations revealed the remains of a parade chariot as well as bronze, ceramic, and iron utensils together with other grave goods. Following the discovery, the finds passed through the hands of several Italian owners and dealers who were responsible for the appearance of the chariot and related material on the Paris art market. There they were purchased in 1903 by General Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the first director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Monteleone chariot is the best preserved example of its kind from ancient Italy before the Roman period. The relatively good condition of its major parts--the panels of the car, the pole, and the wheels--has made it possible to undertake a new reconstruction based on the most recent scholarship. Moreover, some of the surviving ivory fragments can now be placed with reasonable certitude.

The Form and Function of the Chariot

Chariots originated in the Ancient Near East during the early second millennium B.C. and spread westward through Egypt, Cyprus, and the Greek world. In the predominant early type, the car consisted essentially of a platform with a light barrier at the front.

On the Italian peninsula, the largest number of chariots come from Etruria and the surrounding regions. They are datable between the second half of the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. and represent several varieties. None seems to have been used for fighting in battle. Most came to light in tombs; after serving in life, they were buried with their owners, male and also female.

The Monteleone chariot belongs to a group of parade chariots, so called because they were used by significant individuals on special occasions. They have two wheels and were drawn by two horses standing about forty-nine inches (122 centimeters) apart at the point where the yoke rests on their necks. The car would have accommodated the driver and the distinguished passenger.

The shape of the car, with a tall panel in front and a lower one at each side, provided expansive surfaces for decoration, executed in repoussé. The frieze at the axle, the attachment of the pole to the car, and the ends of the pole and yoke all have additional figural embellishment.

The Materials of the Chariot

Although none of the substructure of the original chariot survives, except in one wheel, much information can be gleaned from details on the bronze pieces, other preserved chariots, and ancient depictions of chariots. Note that a chariot is represented on the proper left panel of the car.

The preserved bronze elements of the car were originally mounted on a wooden substructure. The rails supporting the three main figural panels were made from a tree such as a yew or wild fig. The floor consisted of wooden slats. The wooden wheels were revetted with bronze, an exceptional practice probably reserved only for the most elaborate chariots. A bit of the preserved core has been identified as oak. The tires are of iron. The sections of the pole were mounted on straight branches.

A major component of the original vehicle was leather applied to the wooden substructure. The connection of the pole to the car would have been reinforced by rawhide straps gathered beneath the boar's head, and the yoke would have been lashed to the pole. The upper end of the pole shows traces of the leather bands. In addition, all of the horses' harness was of leather. Moreover, rings of pigskin with the fat attached helped reduce friction between the moving parts of the wheels.

The Monteleone chariot is distinguished not only by the extraordinary execution of the bronze panels but also by the inclusion of ivory inlays. The ivories, from both elephant and hippopotamus, are so fragmentary that only the tusks of the boar and the finials at the back of the car have been placed in their original positions. The remaining pieces are exhibited in a case on the south wall. A series of long narrow strips served as edging, perhaps around the panels of the car or on the underside of the pole. It is possible that other fragments filled the spaces between the figures in the central panel of the car. A major question concerning these adjuncts is the method of their attachment, requiring the use of an adhesive. Another question is whether the ivories were painted.

The Figures on the Chariot

The iconography represents a carefully thought-out program. The three major panels of the car depict episodes from the life of Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War. In the magnificent central scene, Achilles, on the right, receives from his mother, Thetis, on the left, a shield and helmet to replace the armor that Achilles had given his friend Patroklos, for combat against the Trojan Hektor. Patroklos was killed, allowing Hektor to take Achilles' armor. The subject was widely known thanks to the account in Homer's Iliad and many representations in Greek art. The panel on the left shows a combat between two warriors, usually identified as the Greek Achilles and the Trojan Memnon. In the panel on the right, the apotheosis of Achilles shows him ascending in a chariot drawn by winged horses.

The subsidiary reliefs partly covered by the wheels are interpreted as showing Achilles as a youth in the care of the centaur Chiron and Achilles as a lion felling his foes, in this case a stag and a bull.

The central axis of the chariot is reinforced by the head and forelegs of the boar at the join of the pole to the car. The deer below Achilles' shield appears slung over the boar's back. The eagle's head at the front of the pole repeats the two attacking eagles at the top of the central panel, and the lion heads on the yoke relate to the numerous savage felines on the car.

While the meaning of the human and animal figures allows for various interpretations, there is a thematic unity and a Homeric quality emphasizing the glory of the hero.

The Artistic Origin of the Chariot

The three panels of the car represent the main artistic achievement. Scholarly opinion agrees that the style of the decoration is strongly influenced by Greek art, particularly that of Ionia and adjacent islands such as Rhodes. The choice of subjects, moreover, reflects close knowledge of the epics recounting the Trojan War. In the extent of Greek influence, the chariot resembles works of virtually all media from Archaic Etruria. Contemporary carved ambers reflect a similar situation.

The typically Etruscan features of the object begin with its function, for chariots were not significant in Greek life of the sixth century B.C. except in athletic contests. Furthermore, iconographical motifs such as the winged horses in Achilles' apotheosis and the plethora of birds of prey reflect Etruscan predilections. The repoussé panels may have been produced in one of the important metal-working centers such as Vulci by a local craftsman well familiar with Greek art or possibly by an immigrant bronze-worker. The chariot could well have been made for an important individual living in southern Etruria or Latium. Its burial in Monteleone may have to do with the fact that this town controlled a major route through the Appenine Mountains. The vehicle could have been a gift to win favor with a powerful local authority or to reward his services.

Beyond discussion is the superlative skill of the artist. His control of the height of the relief, from very high to subtly shallow, is extraordinary. Equally remarkable are the richness and variety of the decoration lavished on all of the figures, especially those of the central panel. In its original state, with the gleaming bronze and painted ivory as well as all of the accessory paraphernalia, the chariot must have been dazzling.

The Reconstruction

After the parts of the chariot arrived in the Museum in 1903, they were assembled in a presentation that remained on view for almost a century. During the new reconstruction, which took three years' work, the chariot was entirely dismantled. A new support was made according to the same structural principles as the ancient one would have been. The reexamination of many pieces has allowed them to be placed in their correct positions. Moreover, the bronze sheathing of the pole, which had been considered only partially preserved, has been recognized as substantially complete.

The main element that has not been reconstructed is the yoke. Although the length is correct, the wooden bar simply connects the two bronze pieces.

RELIEF is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise with little artistic effect if the lowered background is left plain, as is often the case. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

BAS-RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief"], from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves* and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves* in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur* Temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor* are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon* temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals—where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques", which may be set in furniture or framed. Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced. These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

* go to my pictures of:

Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom, Borobodur, Prambanan . . .

Elegant, footed antique brass screen with applied floral repousse ... gorgeous.

24 gauge copper sheet, 4.75 x 6".

Ring designed for a wedding on a ship, May 2011. Copper, Sterling, Fine Silver, High quality Freshwater Pearl. Sawn, drilled, soldered, forged. Copper base stiched with Silver wire. Internal pod, stiched with copper wire. Applique soldering of copper on silver for ring shank. Sawn and repousseed leaf shape that holds pod above the shank. Pearl is mounted on a hand fabricated screw post. Interior of large pod was created by fusing silver powder (left from electrical etching on silver) to the walls. Patina - Liver of Sulpher. Size varies between 9 - 7.5. Open shank construction. Shank is squared.

It was found with five other diadems, at a temple site in Hockwold-cum-Wilton. It is made of bronze and decorated with repousse medallions depicting bearded faces of a Celtic type. The god worshipped may have only been of local significance, but the crown's pointed finial is reminiscent of the spiked head-dress worn by flamines, a priestly college of high status in Rome itself. The crown stands 6" high, and the headband is adjustable.

family and cultural treasures: golden repousse amulets have fantastic details and expression. created by tibetan and nepali goldsmiths by hammering the metal from both sides, these treasured possessions are only worn on the most ceremonial non-religious occasions, and passed down the family generation by generation. full of religious symbolism and monumental in scale, they are believed to provide protection from evil

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Ornaments make up most of the life savings of many Khampa families, and so play an important role in Tibetan families' lives as well as in announcing the social status of the wearers. They are saved up for over many years and handed down for centuries from generation to generation within families. Until very recently, these families were nomadic and have to move every few months because of the snowy seasons in the Himalayas, so Khampas have always needed to store their wealth in portable form. So being unable to store wealth in the form of estates or houses or land or in a bank, for millenia wealth has been stored in art, precious fabrics, and particularly into ornaments.

Their culture is very conservative about the type of ornaments favored: for thousands of years jewelry made from amber, turquoise and coral have been worn because the stones are believed to hold spiritual power. Gold and silver and also naturally found in Tibet, and the use of these metals by the wealthy also goes back thousands of years. Their ornaments are very chunky, bold and colorful. While the gold earrings that Khampa women wear may have cost them a year or maybe several year's of their salary, ornaments carry so much social status in their society that probably didn't have to think twice about the purchase.

To the Khampa people these ornaments have the utmost sentimental value and significance, because they are the physical remnants of generations of their ancestors hard work or success. what these people are wearing is not just their life savings, but also their family history and treasure. this culture has been around for millenia - archeological finds from the 1st century AD in the khampa area unearthed ornaments that are essentially the same in design and materials as today's are. there are also beliefs that the stones provide good luck and protection to disease. dyed red coral is the most sought after stone, but interestingly tibet is very very far from any oceans - all the coral is imported by traders! Religious symbols from Tibetan Buddhism frequency form the designs of pieces, however archeological finds show that the role of ornaments in Tibetan society and peoples' lives long predate the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet. Indeed the beliefs of spiritual protection being provided by coral, amber and turquoise probably originate from the ancient shamanic Bon religion.

Les Guingampaises n'ont pas vraiment pas été récompensées de leurs efforts. Ce dimanche, elles sont sorties de la Coupe de France face à Lyon (0-5).

La première période timide des Lyonnaises ne profite pas aux Rouge et Noir qui échouent sur le poteau de Fourré (7'). En seconde période, Lyon relève la tête et assomme Guingamp dans la dernière demi-heure.

Si Bremer ouvre le score (0-1, 67'), Le Sommer (84'), Hegerberg (88'), Lavogez (89') et Kumagai sur penalty (90'+3) infligent un lourd score à l'En Avant.

La fiche technique

Arbitre : Mme Bonnin.

BUTS. Lyon : Bremer (67'), Le Sommer (84'), Hegerberg (88'), Lavogez (89'), Kumagai (90'+3 sp).

GUINGAMP : Gignoux - Dinglor, Debever, Lorgeré, Morin (Quentin 59') - Bueno, Nwuaboku (Fleury 59') - Oparanozir, Pervier, Le Garrec - Fourré. Entraineur : Sarah M'Barek.

LYON : Gérard - Franco, Buchanan, Renard (cap.), Henning (Bremer 46') - Kaci, Kumagai - Thomas, Dali (Le Sommer 46'), Lavogez - Hegerberg. Entraîneur: Gérard Prêcheur.

L'OL féminin se déplace sur le terrain de Guingamp, dimanche après-midi (16h40), en 1/8 de finale de la Coupe de France.

Après deux victoires consécutives face à Juvisy (5-2, 1-0), en D1 féminine, les Lyonnaises retrouvent la Coupe de France avec un déplacement à Saint-Brieuc pour affronter Guingamp, en 1/8 de finale. Une équipe chez qui l'OL était allé s'imposer 3-0 en championnat, le 14 janvier dernier, après un succès 9-1 à l'aller.

Lors des tours précédents, les joueuses de Gérard Prêcheur ont sorti l'équipe de DH d'ETG Ambilly (8-0) puis le pensionnaire de D2 Grenoble (6-0), avec des équipes remaniées qui ont permis de donner du temps de jeu à celles qui en avaient besoin. De son côté, Guingamp a obtenu ses qualifications dans des derbys bretons face aux équipes de D2 Saint-Malo (6-0) et Brest (4-2).

Tenantes du titre, les Lyonnaises auront à coeur de décrocher leur qualification pour les 1/4 de finale, tout en préparant au mieux le déplacement décisif à Montpellier, le week-end prochain, en D1 féminine. Mbock, Majri, Houara, Seger, et Morgan sont au repos.

L’OL féminin a décroché son billet pour les quarts de finale de la Coupe de France en allant s'imposer 5-0 dans les Côtes d'Armor.

Les Lyonnaises poursuivent leur route dans la compétition après leur victoire ce dimanche à Saint-Brieuc sur le terrain de l'En-Avant de Guingamp. Une qualification pour les quarts de finale de la Coupe de France qui a été longue à se dessiner.

À la mi-temps le score était toujours de 0-0 et la plus belle occasion était à mettre au crédit des joueuses de Sarah M'Barek qui trouvaient la base du poteau de Méline Gerard sur une frappe d'Adélie Fourre. Durant ces 45 premières minutes, les Lyonnaises avaient eu bien du mal à se montrer dangereuses, si ce n'est sur une tentative de Claire Lavogez sauvée sur la ligne.

Dès le début de la seconde période, Gérard Prêcheur lançait sur le terrain Pauline Bremer et Eugénie Le Sommer. Des changement décisifs puisque Bremer se créait dans la foulée une première occasion. L'attaquante allemande ouvrait finalement le score à la 65e minute sur un corner dévié par Wendie Renard et qu'elle convertissait au second poteau (0-1, 65').

Malgré cet avantage, les Lyonnaises se faisaient dans la foulée une grosse frayeur et il fallait une double parade de Méline Gerard pour éviter l'égalisation guingampaise (70'). Un avertissement sans conséquence car dans la foulée Pauline Bremer mettait fin au suspense en ajoutant deux nouveaux buts : le premier sur une reprise après une déviation d'Ada Hegerberg (0-2) et le second sur un centre de Le Sommer repris de la tête au second poteau (0-3). Dans les derniers instants, Claire Lavogez (sur une passe de Bremer) et Saki Kumagai (sur pénalty) portaient le score à 5-0.

Avec cette large victoire, les tenantes du titre restent en course dans cette édition 2017 et seront attentives au tirage au sort des quarts de finale qui sera effectué ce mardi 21 février. Les quatre rencontres seront jouées le dimanche 12 mars. prochain.

Au Stade Fred Aubert à Saint-Brieuc

CDF féminine (1/8 finale) : EA Guingamp - OL féminin 0-5 (0-0)

Arbitre : Sabine Bonnin. Spectateurs : 800 env.

Buts : Bremer (65', 84' et 87' ), Lavogez (89') et Kumagai (93') pour l’OL

OL : Gerard – Petit, Renard (cap.), Buchanan, Henning (Bremer, 46'), - Kaci (Marozsan, 65'), Kumagai, Dali (Le Sommer, 46'), Thomis - Lavogez, Hegerberg. Entr. G. Prêcheur.

L'EA Guingamp s'est incliné 5-0 contre l'Olympique lyonnais ce dimanche en huitième de finale de la Coupe de France féminine. Les Bretonnes ont craqué en toute fin de match.

e score large de 0-5 ne reflète pas vraiment la physionomie du match entre l'EA Guingamp et l'Olympique lyonnais.

Les Bretonnes ont longtemps tenu tête à la meilleure équipe de football féminin du championnat français. En début de première période, Adélie Fourre a failli donner l'avantage à l'EA Guingamp mais sa frappe a fini sur le poteau.

Triplé de Bremer

Les Lyonnaises n'ont réussi à marquer qu'après l'heure de jeu. Suite à un corner, Renard a dévié le ballon de la tête en direction de Bremer, qui a réussi à passer devant la gardienne guingampaise pour ensuite marquer du pied droit en pivot (0-1, 67').

L'EAG aurait pu égaliser quatre minutes plus tard mais la frappe d'Oparanozie a été repoussée par Méline Gerard, la gardienne de l'OL. Dans la continuité de cette action, la tentative de Fleury est passée de peu à côté du but.

Mais face à l'épuisement des joueuses bretonnes en fin de match, les Lyonnaises ont réussi à prendre le large. Bremer s'est offert un triplé grâce à une reprise de volée (0-2, 84') puis une tête plongeante (0-3, 88'). Claire Lavogez a ensuite corsé l'addition d'une demi-volée en pleine lucarne (0-4, 89') avant que Kumagaï ne transforme un penalty en toute fin de match (0-5, 90'+5).

Les Guingampaises y ont longtemps cru, mais ne sont pas parvenues à faire tomber le tout puissant Olympique Lyonnais. Et ont finalement concédé un lourd score à l'arrivée.

Elles résistent longtemps. Bien plus longtemps que lors des deux confrontations en championnat. Mais en seconde période, les Guingampaises craquent. Pourtant, Wendie Renard et ses partenaires peinent à entrer dans la rencontre. Et elles sont d'ailleurs les premières à se faire peur. La frappe d'Adélie Fourré heurte le montant droit d'une Méline Gérard totalement battue (7'). « Je suis dégoûtée, mais c'est comme ça », regrette l'intéressée, titulaire en lieu et place de Salma Amani, blessée pendant l'échauffement. Si les Lyonnaises mettent peu à peu le pied sur le ballon, elles réalisent un premier acte poussif offensivement. Seule la frappe de Corine Franco dans les six mètres, repoussée par Margaux Bueno, parvient à inquiéter les « Rouge et Noir » (43').

L'ogre lyonnais sort ses crocs

Mécontent de son équipe, Gérard Prêcheur procède à deux changements au retour des vestiaires. À peine entrée en jeu, Pauline Bremer se signale, mais ne trouve pas le cadre (47'). Lyon s'installe dans le camp breton et oblige Gignoux à s'employer sur une tête de Renard (65'). Dans la foulée, Renard reprend le dessus sur la défense guingampaise qui ne parvient pas à se dégager. Dans les parages, Bremer concrétise la domination lyonnaise (0-1, 67'). Loin d'être atterrées, les filles de Sarah M'Barek réagissent immédiatement et se procurent une occasion en or. Sur le flanc droit, Oparanozie bute sur Gérard. Le ballon revient dans les pieds de Fleury. Le stade Fred-Aubert retient son souffle, mais l'Internationale U19 croise légèrement trop sa frappe (71'). Quand l'efficacité n'est pas au rendez-vous, la note est souvent payée cash face à l'OL. L'En Avant n'échappe pas à la règle et plie à nouveau sur une frappe d'Eugénie Le Sommer (0-2, 84').

Guingamp s'écroule, Lyon déroule

Dans les dernières minutes, Lyon se déchaîne et alourdit le score grâce à Ada Hegerberg (0-3, 88') et Claire Lavogez (0-4, 89'). Avant de donner au score son allure finale sur un penalty de Saki Kumagai (0-5, 90'+3). « C'est sévère quand on voit comment on s'est battues et arrachées, concède M'Barek. Mais je suis hyperfière de mes joueuses ». Une défaite globalement logique, mais extrêmement cruelle pour En Avant.

La fiche technique

Mi-temps : 0-0

Arbitre : Mme Bonnin.

BUTS.

Lyon : Bremer (67'), Le Sommer (84') Hegerberg (88'), Lavogez (89'), Kumagai (90'+3 sp).

EA Guingamp :

Gignoux ? Dinglor, Debever, Lorgeré, Morin (Quéro 59') ? Bueno, Nwabuoku (Fleury 59') ? Oparanozie, Pervier (cap.), Le Garrec ? Fourré (Ndolo Ewele 77'). Entraîneur. Sarah M'Barek.

Lyon : Gérard ? Franco, Buchanan, Renard (cap.), Henning (Bremer 46') ? Kaci (Marozsan 67'), Kumagai ? Thomis, Dali (Le Sommer 46'), Lavogez - Hegerberg. Entraîneur : Gérard Prêcheur.

Au club depuis le 01 juil. 2007 Né le 13 août 1986 à Colombes Pays : France

Passée par le CNFE et Montpellier, Elodie Thomis rejoint l'OL féminin en 2007 et participe à la première campagne européenne du club. Son impressionnante pointe de vitesse fait de la Martiniquaise une joueuse hors du commun. L'attaquante française a tout gagné avec l'OL, et fait partie des cadres chez les Bleues.

Élodie Thomis (de son nom complet Élodie Ginette Thomis), née le 13 août 1986 à Colombes, est une footballeuse française. Elle évolue au poste d'attaquante. Elle joue à l'Olympique lyonnais et en équipe de France de football.

D'ascendance martiniquaise, Élodie Thomis a d'abord pratiqué l'athlétisme et en particulier le sprint (60 m).

Elle effectue sa première apparition en équipe de France le 6 juin 2005, face à l'Italie. Elle inscrit son premier doublé avec les Bleues le 27 octobre 2007 lors d'un match face à la Serbie.

Élodie a également joué en équipe de France des moins de 20 ans.

Élodie Thomis soutient également la Fondation du Sport : elle a pris part au programme Bien Manger, c’est bien Joué !, programme lancé en 2005 par la Fondation du Sport. Elle a participé à la réalisation de vidéos adressées aux jeunes sportifs pour leur apprendre les bases d'une alimentation adaptée à l'effort physique. Ce programme de la Fondation du Sport sensibilise également les enfants à l'importance de l'activité physique.

Voici une nouvelle centenaire en équipe de France féminine. Ce samedi soir face à la Suède, Elodie Thomis, 27 ans, a disputé son 100e match avec le maillot bleu. Une performance exceptionnelle pour une fille arrivée dans le football à l'âge de 15 ans, devenue depuis l'une des joueuses les plus redoutée de la planète foot féminin. Focus.

Le parcours d'Elodie Thomis est tout sauf banal. À 27 ans, l'attaquante de l'OL vient de célébrer sa 100e sélection en équipe de France de football, ce samedi soir à Amiens lors du match amical entre la France et la Suède remporté par les Bleues sur le score de 3 à 0. Exceptionnel pour une fille arrivée si tard dans le foot.

Ses premiers pas avec le ballon rond, Thomis les fait à 15 ans. Avant cela, l'attaquante supersonique fréquentait les pistes d'athlétisme. En seulement 12 ans, Thomis est passée d'athlète, à footballeuse, pour devenir une joueuse d'exception depuis plusieurs saisons. Une évolution fulgurante, à l'image de son jeu basé sur la vitesse.

Souvent raillée pour sa maladresse il y a encore quelques années, Thomis a petit à petit pris la mesure de son sport. "Il a fallu que je travaille deux fois plus que les autres", nous racontait-elle avant l'Euro 2013, avant d'ajouter qu'elle avait "beaucoup souffert de cette lacune par rapport aux autres qui étaient déjà à l’aise techniquement."

Et les faits sont là. Saison après saison, l’ailière prend du galon. D’abord au CNFE, où elle réussit deux premières belles saisons à 17 ans, claquant 28 buts en D1. Elle fait vite ses premiers pas chez les Bleues lors de l’Euro 2005, en remplaçant Hoda Lattaf à la 72e minute d’une victoire face à l’Italie (3-1).

Incontournable

Direction Montpellier en 2006, où elle s’affirme, découvre la Ligue des champions et soulève 2 Coupes de France, avant d’aller à Lyon. Là où elle va progresser de manière impressionnante, forgeant son palmarès et sa réputation. Peu utilisée lors de sa première saison dans le Rhône (9 titularisations, 17 matches en D1), encore considérée comme une joueuse avec des lacunes techniques, elle parvient à s’imposer dès la saison suivante. Titulaire en Ligue des champions, mais aussi en équipe de France, elle voit son temps de jeu grimper en 2008-2009. Elle devient définitivement incontournable lors des saisons qui suivent.

A mesure que le football féminin français évolue, Thomis devient une joueuse de plus en plus redoutable. Certainement la plus rapide au monde, elle étoffe sa palette technique. Crochets, passes, frappes, son arsenal s'améliore chaque saison. Une véritable dynamite, imprévisible, qui provoque la peur dans les rangs adverses. « J’ai beaucoup appris surtout et je suis entourée de très bonnes joueuses » nous expliquait-elle cet été. « Quand on a Abily, Necib, Bussaglia et toutes les autres à l’entraînement dans son équipe, on ne peut que progresser. J’ai vu, j’ai essayé et j’ai appris. Certains gestes sont restés, d’autres pas. »

Plus besoin de se justifier...

Depuis avril 2012 et son impressionnant triplé face au Pays de Galles, synonyme de qualification pour l’Euro, l’attaquante n’a plus besoin de justifier son niveau technique. Quelques mois plus tard, en D1 féminine, c’est son doublé face à Juvisy (3-0) qui avait offert le 6e titre de champion de France à l’OL.

Thomis est aujourd’hui la 11e française à atteindre la barre des 100 sélections. 6e meilleure buteuse de l’histoire (27 buts) avec un ratio but/match (0,27) comparable à celui d’une Hoda Lattaf (0,28), Thomis est la 5e française la plus capée de la sélection actuelle. A seulement 27 ans, et avec une telle vitesse dans la progression, on se demande jusqu’où elle pourra aller. En finale au Canada, ce serait bien.

Relief is a sculptural technique where the sculpted elements remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane.[1] What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief /ˌbɑːrɪˈliːf/), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is only very slightly lower than the sculpted elements. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt (see below). However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work.

The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

Rock reliefs are those carved into solid rock in the open air (if inside caves, whether natural or man-made, they are more likely to be called "rock-cut"). This type is found in many cultures, in particular those of the Ancient Near East and Buddhist countries. A stela is a single standing stone; many of these carry reliefs.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices (see gallery).

BAS RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief", French pronunciation: ​[baʁəljɛf], from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster, which made the technique far easier, was widely used in Egypt and the Near East from antiquity into Islamic times (latterly for architectural decoration, as at the Alhambra), Rome, and Europe from at least the Renaissance, as well as probably elsewhere. However, it needs very good conditions to survive long in unmaintained buildings – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

Mid-relief is probably the most common type of relief found in the Hindu and Buddhist art art of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves in India are rock reliefs. Most of these reliefs are used to narrate sacred scriptures, such as the 1,460 panels of the 9th-century Borobudur temple in Central Java, Indonesia, narrating the Jataka tales or lives of the Buddha. Other examples are low reliefs narrating the Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java, in Cambodia, the temples of Angkor, with scenes including the Samudra manthan or "Churning the Ocean of Milk" at the 12th-century Angkor Wat, and reliefs of apsaras. At Bayon temple in Angkor Thom there are scenes of daily life in the Khmer Empire.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece.[7] Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER-RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals - where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques" or plaquettes, which may be set in furniture or framed, or just kept as they are, a popular form for European collectors, especially in the Renaissance.

Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced.

These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

WIKIPEDIA

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The Magnificent and beautiful lady, the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York City. I was so moved by her stunning beauty and impressed by the absolute perfection of this marvelous representation of liberty. I took this photo of the magnificent Statue of Liberty on my first trip to Liberty Island and New York City in October 2004. She is of utmost beauty and I was totally blown away by her magnifigance.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island, New York in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue, and Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

The statue is of a female figure standing upright, dressed in a robe and a seven point spiked rays representing a nimbus (halo), holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand. The tablet bears the words "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence.

The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151' 1" (46.5 m) tall, with the pedestal and foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 m).

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. The Statue of Liberty's obviously classical appearance (Roman stola, sandals, facial expression) derives from Libertas, ancient Rome's goddess of freedom from slavery, oppression, and tyranny. Broken shackles lie at her feet. The seven spikes in the crown represent the Seven Seas and seven continents. Her torch signifies enlightenment. The tablet in her hand shows the date of the nation's birth, July 4, 1776.

Since 1903, the statue, also known as "Lady Liberty," has been associated with Emma Lazarus's poem “The New Colossus” and has been a symbol of welcome to arriving immigrants. The interior of the pedestal contains a bronze plaque inscribed with the poem, which reads:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

There are 354 steps inside the statue and its pedestal. There are 25 windows in the crown which comprise the jewels beneath the seven rays of the diadem. The tablet which the Statue holds in her left hand reads, in Roman numerals, "July 4, 1776" the day of America's independence from Britain. The Statue of Liberty was engineered to withstand heavy winds. Winds of 50 miles per hour cause the Statue to sway 3 inches (7.62 cm) and the torch to sway 5 inches (12.7 cm). This allows the Statue to move rather than break in high [wind load] conditions.

Source: Wikipedia

Plate (identified as King Shapur II hunting boar), 4th century C.E. (Sasanian, Iran), silver and gilt, 5 x 24 cm (National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)

family and cultural treasures: golden repousse amulet prayer-boxes have fantastic details and expression. created by tibetan and nepali goldsmiths by hammering the metal from both sides, these treasured possessions are only worn on the most ceremonial non-religious occasions, and passed down the family generation by generation. full of religious symbolism and monumental in scale, they are believed to provide protection from evil

=====================================================

Ornaments make up most of the life savings of many Khampa families, and so play an important role in Tibetan families' lives as well as in announcing the social status of the wearers. They are saved up for over many years and handed down for centuries from generation to generation within families. Until very recently, these families were nomadic and have to move every few months because of the snowy seasons in the Himalayas, so Khampas have always needed to store their wealth in portable form. So being unable to store wealth in the form of estates or houses or land or in a bank, for millenia wealth has been stored in art, precious fabrics, and particularly into ornaments.

Their culture is very conservative about the type of ornaments favored: for thousands of years jewelry made from amber, turquoise and coral have been worn because the stones are believed to hold spiritual power. Gold and silver and also naturally found in Tibet, and the use of these metals by the wealthy also goes back thousands of years. Their ornaments are very chunky, bold and colorful. While the gold earrings that Khampa women wear may have cost them a year or maybe several year's of their salary, ornaments carry so much social status in their society that probably didn't have to think twice about the purchase.

To the Khampa people these ornaments have the utmost sentimental value and significance, because they are the physical remnants of generations of their ancestors hard work or success. what these people are wearing is not just their life savings, but also their family history and treasure. this culture has been around for millenia - archeological finds from the 1st century AD in the khampa area unearthed ornaments that are essentially the same in design and materials as today's are. there are also beliefs that the stones provide good luck and protection to disease. dyed red coral is the most sought after stone, but interestingly tibet is very very far from any oceans - all the coral is imported by traders! Religious symbols from Tibetan Buddhism frequency form the designs of pieces, however archeological finds show that the role of ornaments in Tibetan society and peoples' lives long predate the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet. Indeed the beliefs of spiritual protection being provided by coral, amber and turquoise probably originate from the ancient shamanic Bon religion.

The Magnificent and beautiful lady, the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York City. I was so moved by her stunning beauty and impressed by the absolute perfection of this marvelous representation of liberty. I took this photo of the magnificent Statue of Liberty on my first trip to Liberty Island and New York City in October 2004. She is of utmost beauty and I was totally blown away by her magnifigance.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island, New York in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue, and Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

The statue is of a female figure standing upright, dressed in a robe and a seven point spiked rays representing a nimbus (halo), holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand. The tablet bears the words "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence.

The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151' 1" (46.5 m) tall, with the pedestal and foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 m).

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. The Statue of Liberty's obviously classical appearance (Roman stola, sandals, facial expression) derives from Libertas, ancient Rome's goddess of freedom from slavery, oppression, and tyranny. Broken shackles lie at her feet. The seven spikes in the crown represent the Seven Seas and seven continents. Her torch signifies enlightenment. The tablet in her hand shows the date of the nation's birth, July 4, 1776.

Since 1903, the statue, also known as "Lady Liberty," has been associated with Emma Lazarus's poem “The New Colossus” and has been a symbol of welcome to arriving immigrants. The interior of the pedestal contains a bronze plaque inscribed with the poem, which reads:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

There are 354 steps inside the statue and its pedestal. There are 25 windows in the crown which comprise the jewels beneath the seven rays of the diadem. The tablet which the Statue holds in her left hand reads, in Roman numerals, "July 4, 1776" the day of America's independence from Britain. The Statue of Liberty was engineered to withstand heavy winds. Winds of 50 miles per hour cause the Statue to sway 3 inches (7.62 cm) and the torch to sway 5 inches (12.7 cm). This allows the Statue to move rather than break in high [wind load] conditions.

Source: Wikipedia

Les Guingampaises n'ont pas vraiment pas été récompensées de leurs efforts. Ce dimanche, elles sont sorties de la Coupe de France face à Lyon (0-5).

La première période timide des Lyonnaises ne profite pas aux Rouge et Noir qui échouent sur le poteau de Fourré (7'). En seconde période, Lyon relève la tête et assomme Guingamp dans la dernière demi-heure.

Si Bremer ouvre le score (0-1, 67'), Le Sommer (84'), Hegerberg (88'), Lavogez (89') et Kumagai sur penalty (90'+3) infligent un lourd score à l'En Avant.

La fiche technique

Arbitre : Mme Bonnin.

BUTS. Lyon : Bremer (67'), Le Sommer (84'), Hegerberg (88'), Lavogez (89'), Kumagai (90'+3 sp).

GUINGAMP : Gignoux - Dinglor, Debever, Lorgeré, Morin (Quentin 59') - Bueno, Nwuaboku (Fleury 59') - Oparanozir, Pervier, Le Garrec - Fourré. Entraineur : Sarah M'Barek.

LYON : Gérard - Franco, Buchanan, Renard (cap.), Henning (Bremer 46') - Kaci, Kumagai - Thomas, Dali (Le Sommer 46'), Lavogez - Hegerberg. Entraîneur: Gérard Prêcheur.

L'OL féminin se déplace sur le terrain de Guingamp, dimanche après-midi (16h40), en 1/8 de finale de la Coupe de France.

Après deux victoires consécutives face à Juvisy (5-2, 1-0), en D1 féminine, les Lyonnaises retrouvent la Coupe de France avec un déplacement à Saint-Brieuc pour affronter Guingamp, en 1/8 de finale. Une équipe chez qui l'OL était allé s'imposer 3-0 en championnat, le 14 janvier dernier, après un succès 9-1 à l'aller.

Lors des tours précédents, les joueuses de Gérard Prêcheur ont sorti l'équipe de DH d'ETG Ambilly (8-0) puis le pensionnaire de D2 Grenoble (6-0), avec des équipes remaniées qui ont permis de donner du temps de jeu à celles qui en avaient besoin. De son côté, Guingamp a obtenu ses qualifications dans des derbys bretons face aux équipes de D2 Saint-Malo (6-0) et Brest (4-2).

Tenantes du titre, les Lyonnaises auront à coeur de décrocher leur qualification pour les 1/4 de finale, tout en préparant au mieux le déplacement décisif à Montpellier, le week-end prochain, en D1 féminine. Mbock, Majri, Houara, Seger, et Morgan sont au repos.

L’OL féminin a décroché son billet pour les quarts de finale de la Coupe de France en allant s'imposer 5-0 dans les Côtes d'Armor.

Les Lyonnaises poursuivent leur route dans la compétition après leur victoire ce dimanche à Saint-Brieuc sur le terrain de l'En-Avant de Guingamp. Une qualification pour les quarts de finale de la Coupe de France qui a été longue à se dessiner.

À la mi-temps le score était toujours de 0-0 et la plus belle occasion était à mettre au crédit des joueuses de Sarah M'Barek qui trouvaient la base du poteau de Méline Gerard sur une frappe d'Adélie Fourre. Durant ces 45 premières minutes, les Lyonnaises avaient eu bien du mal à se montrer dangereuses, si ce n'est sur une tentative de Claire Lavogez sauvée sur la ligne.

Dès le début de la seconde période, Gérard Prêcheur lançait sur le terrain Pauline Bremer et Eugénie Le Sommer. Des changement décisifs puisque Bremer se créait dans la foulée une première occasion. L'attaquante allemande ouvrait finalement le score à la 65e minute sur un corner dévié par Wendie Renard et qu'elle convertissait au second poteau (0-1, 65').

Malgré cet avantage, les Lyonnaises se faisaient dans la foulée une grosse frayeur et il fallait une double parade de Méline Gerard pour éviter l'égalisation guingampaise (70'). Un avertissement sans conséquence car dans la foulée Pauline Bremer mettait fin au suspense en ajoutant deux nouveaux buts : le premier sur une reprise après une déviation d'Ada Hegerberg (0-2) et le second sur un centre de Le Sommer repris de la tête au second poteau (0-3). Dans les derniers instants, Claire Lavogez (sur une passe de Bremer) et Saki Kumagai (sur pénalty) portaient le score à 5-0.

Avec cette large victoire, les tenantes du titre restent en course dans cette édition 2017 et seront attentives au tirage au sort des quarts de finale qui sera effectué ce mardi 21 février. Les quatre rencontres seront jouées le dimanche 12 mars. prochain.

Au Stade Fred Aubert à Saint-Brieuc

CDF féminine (1/8 finale) : EA Guingamp - OL féminin 0-5 (0-0)

Arbitre : Sabine Bonnin. Spectateurs : 800 env.

Buts : Bremer (65', 84' et 87' ), Lavogez (89') et Kumagai (93') pour l’OL

OL : Gerard – Petit, Renard (cap.), Buchanan, Henning (Bremer, 46'), - Kaci (Marozsan, 65'), Kumagai, Dali (Le Sommer, 46'), Thomis - Lavogez, Hegerberg. Entr. G. Prêcheur.

L'EA Guingamp s'est incliné 5-0 contre l'Olympique lyonnais ce dimanche en huitième de finale de la Coupe de France féminine. Les Bretonnes ont craqué en toute fin de match.

e score large de 0-5 ne reflète pas vraiment la physionomie du match entre l'EA Guingamp et l'Olympique lyonnais.

Les Bretonnes ont longtemps tenu tête à la meilleure équipe de football féminin du championnat français. En début de première période, Adélie Fourre a failli donner l'avantage à l'EA Guingamp mais sa frappe a fini sur le poteau.

Triplé de Bremer

Les Lyonnaises n'ont réussi à marquer qu'après l'heure de jeu. Suite à un corner, Renard a dévié le ballon de la tête en direction de Bremer, qui a réussi à passer devant la gardienne guingampaise pour ensuite marquer du pied droit en pivot (0-1, 67').

L'EAG aurait pu égaliser quatre minutes plus tard mais la frappe d'Oparanozie a été repoussée par Méline Gerard, la gardienne de l'OL. Dans la continuité de cette action, la tentative de Fleury est passée de peu à côté du but.

Mais face à l'épuisement des joueuses bretonnes en fin de match, les Lyonnaises ont réussi à prendre le large. Bremer s'est offert un triplé grâce à une reprise de volée (0-2, 84') puis une tête plongeante (0-3, 88'). Claire Lavogez a ensuite corsé l'addition d'une demi-volée en pleine lucarne (0-4, 89') avant que Kumagaï ne transforme un penalty en toute fin de match (0-5, 90'+5).

Les Guingampaises y ont longtemps cru, mais ne sont pas parvenues à faire tomber le tout puissant Olympique Lyonnais. Et ont finalement concédé un lourd score à l'arrivée.

Elles résistent longtemps. Bien plus longtemps que lors des deux confrontations en championnat. Mais en seconde période, les Guingampaises craquent. Pourtant, Wendie Renard et ses partenaires peinent à entrer dans la rencontre. Et elles sont d'ailleurs les premières à se faire peur. La frappe d'Adélie Fourré heurte le montant droit d'une Méline Gérard totalement battue (7'). « Je suis dégoûtée, mais c'est comme ça », regrette l'intéressée, titulaire en lieu et place de Salma Amani, blessée pendant l'échauffement. Si les Lyonnaises mettent peu à peu le pied sur le ballon, elles réalisent un premier acte poussif offensivement. Seule la frappe de Corine Franco dans les six mètres, repoussée par Margaux Bueno, parvient à inquiéter les « Rouge et Noir » (43').

L'ogre lyonnais sort ses crocs

Mécontent de son équipe, Gérard Prêcheur procède à deux changements au retour des vestiaires. À peine entrée en jeu, Pauline Bremer se signale, mais ne trouve pas le cadre (47'). Lyon s'installe dans le camp breton et oblige Gignoux à s'employer sur une tête de Renard (65'). Dans la foulée, Renard reprend le dessus sur la défense guingampaise qui ne parvient pas à se dégager. Dans les parages, Bremer concrétise la domination lyonnaise (0-1, 67'). Loin d'être atterrées, les filles de Sarah M'Barek réagissent immédiatement et se procurent une occasion en or. Sur le flanc droit, Oparanozie bute sur Gérard. Le ballon revient dans les pieds de Fleury. Le stade Fred-Aubert retient son souffle, mais l'Internationale U19 croise légèrement trop sa frappe (71'). Quand l'efficacité n'est pas au rendez-vous, la note est souvent payée cash face à l'OL. L'En Avant n'échappe pas à la règle et plie à nouveau sur une frappe d'Eugénie Le Sommer (0-2, 84').

Guingamp s'écroule, Lyon déroule

Dans les dernières minutes, Lyon se déchaîne et alourdit le score grâce à Ada Hegerberg (0-3, 88') et Claire Lavogez (0-4, 89'). Avant de donner au score son allure finale sur un penalty de Saki Kumagai (0-5, 90'+3). « C'est sévère quand on voit comment on s'est battues et arrachées, concède M'Barek. Mais je suis hyperfière de mes joueuses ». Une défaite globalement logique, mais extrêmement cruelle pour En Avant.

La fiche technique

Mi-temps : 0-0

Arbitre : Mme Bonnin.

BUTS.

Lyon : Bremer (67'), Le Sommer (84') Hegerberg (88'), Lavogez (89'), Kumagai (90'+3 sp).

EA Guingamp :

Gignoux ? Dinglor, Debever, Lorgeré, Morin (Quéro 59') ? Bueno, Nwabuoku (Fleury 59') ? Oparanozie, Pervier (cap.), Le Garrec ? Fourré (Ndolo Ewele 77'). Entraîneur. Sarah M'Barek.

Lyon : Gérard ? Franco, Buchanan, Renard (cap.), Henning (Bremer 46') ? Kaci (Marozsan 67'), Kumagai ? Thomis, Dali (Le Sommer 46'), Lavogez - Hegerberg. Entraîneur : Gérard Prêcheur.

Creator: unknown

Date: circa 1900

Object origin: Galicia

Medium: Silver: repoussé , gilt, pierced

Repository: Yeshiva University Museum

Call Number: 1986.196

Parent Collection: The Max Stern Collection

Rights Information: No known copyright restrictions; may be subject to third party rights. For more copyright information, click here.

See more information about this image and others at CJH Museum Collections.

This material may be used for personal, research and educational purposes only. Any other use without prior authorization is prohibited. Please contact the Yeshiva University Museum at YUMinquiries@cjh.org for further information.

Sometimes lots of things come together to make a piece. We have strong historical interest in ancient Rome and had recently went to the Pompeii exhibit at LACMA. This started influencing our micromosiaic work in the Roman style. About the same time, one of our collectors commissioned us to do "something" with a couple of ancient coins she had. The something turned out to be this. The piece is reversable.

18" Length. Sterling silver,copper, neoprene, micromosaic, bone, Egyptian faience, ancient Greek and Roman coins

Repousse.

Birmingham Oratory seen from Chamberlain Gardens.

It's founder is now Saint John Henry Newman.

The Birmingham Oratory is an English Catholic religious community of the Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, located in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham. The community was founded in 1849 by the Blessed John Henry Newman, Cong.Orat., the first house of that congregation in England.

Part of the complex of the Oratory is the Parish Church of the Immaculate Conception, commonly referred to as the Oratory Church. It now also serves as the national shrine to Newman.

The current church was constructed between 1907 and 1910 in the Baroque style to replace the original structure as a memorial to Newman. It was designed by the architect Edward Doran Webb. It is familiarly called the Little Rome in Birmingham.

Prior to a final determination regarding the beatification of Newman, the Holy See gave instructions that his remains were to be transferred from the Oratorian cemetery in the West Midlands to the Oratory Church. A marble tomb was built for this but not installed in the church. When church and civil authorities opened the grave in October 2008, however, they found no human remains from his grave.

The Grade II* listed church continues to serve the Congregation of the Oratory there. Elsewhere in England, there are also communities of the Congregation at the Brompton Oratory in London and the Oxford Oratory.

In February 2012, the church suffered the theft of a large metal cross from its roof. The loss was valued at £30,000.

Grade II* Listed Building

The Church of the Immaculate Conception (The Oratory), the Oratory Priests' House and the Former Oratory School Buildings

Summary

A Roman Catholic, Oratory church, designed by E Doran Webb and built between 1903-1909, incorporating earlier work by John Hungerford Pollen of 1858, Henry Clutton of 1872-3, and an addition by G B Cox in 1927, together with the accompanying presbytery building, designed by Terence Flanagan in 1851 and the former Oratory School buildings designed by Henry Clutton in 1861-2 and 1872-3.

Description

ORATORY CHURCH

A Roman Catholic, Oratory church, designed by E Doran Webb from 1903-1909 and incorporating earlier work by John Hungerford Pollen of 1858, Henry Clutton of 1872-3, and an addition by G B Cox in 1927.

MATERIALS: the building is of limestone ashlar with a lead roof and internally clad with a rich variety of marble veneers, inlays and mosaic work. The Tunnel vault over the nave is of chestnut which was painted in 1959.

PLAN: the building is oriented north-south, with the northern end representing the ritual eastern end. Ritual compass directions are used throughout this description. The basilican plan has a nave flanked by aisles. At either side of the nave alternating bays contain either a side chapel or a confessional, placed against the outer walls of the side aisles. The sanctuary has an apsidal end and there are transepts to each side whose outer walls are flush with those of the nave aisles. Above the crossing is a dome, and clerestory lighting is by large lights which pierce the sides of the tunnel vault. Further side chapels are placed at either side of the sanctuary. The organ gallery and loft are positioned in the south transept, above the altar of the Sacred Heart. The earlier St Philip’s Chapel (now dedicated to the Blessed John Newman) is attached to the south side of the south transept. The gallery at the western end of the nave is placed over bays of the earlier school cloister. The Oratory House lies to the south and is connected to the church through the Sacristy.

EXTERIOR: the west end of the church is fronted by the cloister garth of the former Oratory School. The façade is of three bays, divided by Composite pilasters with paired pilasters to the corners. At ground floor level it has three openings which front bays of the cloister. The central, taller, opening has a moulded, lugged surround above which is a pulvinated frieze and a broken, segmental pediment with figures of angels at either side, carved in relief and supporting an escutcheon with a coat of arms and a cardinal’s hat. At either side are portals with Gibbs surrounds and prominent triple keystones set against pulvinated friezes. At gallery level is a single, central light with segmental top, flanked by corbel brackets. The top of the wall has an entablature with pulvinated frieze and a triangular pediment.

The north flank of the nave has seven bays. The division of the bays is unmarked at ground-floor level, but buttresses with concave tops appear between the clerestory bays. At the top of the aisle walls is a balustrade with vase-shaped balusters and square piers. A similar balustrade is placed above the clerestory, along the skyline, and encircles the building above a full entablature with pulvinated frieze. The narrow nave windows which light the alternate bays housing confessionals have moulded surrounds and the larger clerestory windows have pilasters at either side and pedimental tops. The transept at left is blank, save for a niche with an arched head containing a statue of Philip Neri. The left corner has an octagonal staircase turret with a pepper-pot top. In the re-entrant angle between the eastern flank of the north transept and the chancel is the later Shrine of St Philip. This has walls clad with faience tiles, channelled rustication, canted corners and a stone surround to the half-glazed double doors at the centre of its north front. There is a dentilled cornice to the top of the wall. Above this is the drum of the dome, with pilasters placed between the segment-headed windows. Above the entablature the ribbed copper dome has a cross finial.

The chancel has a single window to the upper wall at left, but is otherwise blind, with square buttresses rising for the full height of the wall and continuing the cornice.

The south flank is largely masked by the Oratory House building, the Sacristy and Pollen’s Chapel of St Philip (now the Blessed John Newman), which are all characterised by red brick walling. The chapel has an apsidal end with three arched windows and above this the library has sash windows, all with stone surrounds. The eastern end of the south transept has an octagonal staircase turret, similar to that seen on the north side. In the re-entrant angle with the chancel is the lower Chapel of St Charles, which has three windows to its south flank. Above it both the transept and chancel have windows with moulded, pedimental surrounds.

The dome has four windows to its drum with moulded surrounds and floating pediments. Each window is flanked by three pairs of engaged Tuscan columns. There are four piers with arched niches, which were intended to be filled with carvings of the Evangelists, but this work was not carried out and the attached blocks project from the walls. Above the entablature is a parapet with balustrade panels and the ribbed dome, with its copper sheathing, rises above that to the stone lantern, which has arched lights and small, engaged columns. The domed top culminates in a ball and gilded cross.

INTERIOR: the nave has mosaic flooring laid in overlapping fan-shaped patterns. The aisle arcades have monolithic, unfluted columns of Breccia marble with bases of green Swedish marble and Composite capitals. These support a full entablature with plain frieze, from which springs the painted timber barrel vault.

The walls of the sanctuary are covered with panels of red African onyx with borders of yellow Siena marble. The altar stands forward from the rear wall on a stepped platform. It was designed by Dunstan Powell in 1899 for the old church. The tabernacle is circular with a domed roof which has enamel inlay. The frontal is of green Connemara marble with lapis lazuli plaques around the edges. Above the altar is a suspended baldacchino of gilded and painted wood. The ceiling of the apse has mosaic decoration representing the Coronation of the Virgin flanked by St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist. Fixed to the side walls are choir stalls of Italian walnut, with tall backs, divided by panelled Corinthian pilasters and with a frieze of swags and ribbons to the top.

The pendentives at the crossing, below the dome, have mosaics representing the Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. Later decoration around the drum represents the Evangelists and major saints. The choir gallery is supported by a double colonnade supporting round arches. The grille to the front of the gallery is elaborately carved and gilded, as is the organ case above, both designed by Ernesto Sensi. At ground level, the altar of the Sacred Heart lies behind the double colonnade and was designed by John Pollen for the earlier church on this site. Against the northern wall of the north transept is Our Lady’s altar. The altar and altar rails were brought from the Church of S Andrea della Valle in Rome in 1911. The altar is flanked by columns of Siberian onyx, originally intended for Westminster Cathedral, which now support gilded statues of kneeling angels. The Shrine of St Philip Neri leads off from the east side of the transept. Its richly decorated interior has walls veneered in Siena marble and monolithic columns of red Languedoc marble to the corners. The Cosmatesque floor has a variety of inlayed patterns. The marble altar contains a wax effigy of the saint and the altar piece (after Guido Reni) has an elaborate gilded frame. To the south wall is a reliquary chest with relics and souvenirs of the saint given to Newman in Rome in 1846-7.

The series of side chapels off the nave all take the form of an apsidal niche with mosaic semi-dome and are richly decorated with panels of different marble veneers. Fixed altars have mosaic or marble fronts or, in the case of the chapel of St Athanasius, a glass panel revealing the decorated coffin of St Valentine. Confessionals are set in alternate bays which each have a stone screen, formed of a round arched central portal, flanked by two flat-headed entrances. Above this is a central stone sculpture niche, with carved consoles to its sides, flanked by a wrought metal screen. The wooden confessionals are set behind the stone screens, at the back of each side bay.

The baptistery is set in the western-most side bay of the north aisle. It was designed by Dunstan Powell and opened in 1912. It has a decorated metal barrier and richly-moulded plaster walls with swags and putti in high relief above ebony panelling. The bowl is of alabaster and the bronze cover (Hardman), which swings to one side, has a figure of St John the Baptist as finial.

The earlier side chapel, approached from the south transept and designed by JH Pollen in 1858, has an altarpiece of Chellaston alabaster designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1880.

ORATORY PRIESTS' HOUSE

A presbytery for Fathers of the Oratory, designed by Terence Flanagan in 1851 in an Italian Renaissance style.

MATERIALS & PLAN: the house is of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with ashlar dressings and a hipped, slate roof. It has three floors and a T-shaped arrangement of corridors on each floor, off which are individual rooms.

EXTERIOR: the southern front, facing Hagley Road, has five bays, symmetrically disposed. There are stone quoins at the corners and stone string courses between the floors, that between the ground and first floors having Vitruvian scroll ornament. A sill band also runs across the façade at first floor level. There are sash windows of twelve panes at ground and first floor levels, and six panes to the attic. Window surrounds are aedicular with lugs and panelled cornice heads at ground floor level. The central doorway has a similarly-moulded surround, above which is a square panel with a broken, segmental pediment, flanked by scrolls. The first floor windows are plainer with brackets below their sills, save for the central opening, which has a lugged surround with panelled cornice, as before, and scrolls to its side. The central, second-floor window has a lugged and shouldered surround. To the top of the wall is a dentilled cornice and the ridge carries four chimneys to full height.

The east front has two bays at left which continue the pattern of the street front. Recessed at right is a lower, two-storey range of four bays which have plainer window surrounds and a string course between the floors. At right again and projecting are five bays to the original height and pattern.

The north front has two widely-spaced bays at left, of the established pattern, with a C20 addition at ground floor level housing the kitchen. To right of this is a projecting single bay with Venetian window to the ground floor and at right again is the curved wall which marks the apsidal end of the chapel of St Philip Neri at ground floor level (now dedicated to the Blessed John Newman), added to the earlier church by Pollen in 1858. This has three arched lights at lower level, above which is the library of the Oratory House, with two blind windows with rectangular heads. Above the parapet and recessed is the curved timber and glass lantern which lights the library.

Chimneys across the building are to their original height and take the form of two square stacks joined by an arch.

INTERIOR: the entrance lobby is flanked by parlours with cornices. A central corridor runs north-south on all floors and a stone staircase with rectangular well is placed at the southern end. This has two metal balusters per tread and a mahogany handrail. The recreation room has an ante-room, divided from the main room by an arch, cornicing and a black marble fire surround. The dining room has wooden panelling, divided by pilasters with applied paterae and plaster anthemia to the top. There is an arched stove recess in the centre of the northern wall and a revolving cupboard by which food could be served to the fathers. In the north-east corner is a pulpit with panelled sides, tester and steps. At first floor level is a Chapter room with fitted platform, benches, cupboards and desk. Individual rooms at first floor level have an outer baize door, to denote private study, as well as an inner door. The study of Blessed John Newman is preserved as it was at his death, with bookcases, an altar and suspended baldacchino. The House library is at second floor level and has fitted bookcases to the walls and a cast iron gallery approached by a spiral staircase. Its deeply coved ceiling rises to the central timber and glass lantern.

ORATORY SCHOOL

A range of former school buildings, now part of the Oratory complex. The School Hall range facing the street was designed by Henry Clutton in 1861-2 and the cloister range, to the north, was designed in 1872-3.

MATERIALS & PLAN: red brick walling laid in English bond, with ashlar dressings and a slate roof. The building has two storeys and is arranged around a rectangular cloister at the southern (ritual western) end of the Oratory church.

EXTERIOR: the southern front faces Hagley Road and abuts the earlier Oratory Priests' House to its right, which is slightly set back. The street frontage has blind brick walling at ground floor left, with a deep, flush stone band at the level of the springing of the round-arched portal at far right. This has a wrought-iron screen with a central gate and repoussé panels and leads through to the cloister behind this range. At first floor level are six windows with arched heads and pilasters at either side, supported by brackets. Flush stone bands run below the sills and at the level of the springing of the arches. The spandrel between the two central windows carries a circular, metal clock face. To the top of the wall is a cornice with brackets and above is a blocking course, sheathed with lead.

The short east flank is blind and abuts the Oratory Priests' House.

The west flank has two bays with first floor windows as before and two arched ground floor lights with prominent keystones. Projecting at left of this is a similar, single bay which appears to be part of an incomplete extension. A C20 extension in plum brick extends to the north of this.

The cloisters have brick vaults with stone dressings to the passage beneath the roadside range and to the northern side which abuts the ritual west front of the church. The east and west sides have beamed ceilings and the south side has deep stone brackets extending from square piers to support a first floor corridor. The east and west ranges and the northern range at either side of the church façade, which runs in front of part of the cloister, have short columns on high, tapered bases with Italian Romanesque capitals. First floor windows above the east and west cloister are arched lights or square-headed lancets.

INTERIOR: the ground floor former gymnasium (now the parish room) has transverse iron H-beams, from which hooks are suspended for gym equipment. A central row of iron columns supports the ceiling. A dog-leg staircase with stone treads leads to the generous first floor landing. The former school room has encased, transverse beams to the ceiling and arched sash windows to the north, south and west sides with a raised platform at the east end. The first floor Chapel has a canted north (ritual east) end, circular windows to the sides and a rectangular skylight.

Persuant to s1 (5) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the angled lift extension to the west of the School buildings and the triangular, single-storey kitchen block to the north of the Oratory Priests' House are not of special architectural or historic interest.

History

The congregation of the Oratory was founded in Rome in around 1552 by Philip Neri. His system of devotion was dependant on private and public prayer and contemplation, mixed with practical acts of charity. He attracted a group of disciples and their meetings, which included music and sermons, were moved to an ‘oratory’ or place of prayer. His group continued to grow and was granted the Church of S Maria in Valicella, which it rebuilt as the ‘Chiesa Nuova’, in which St Philip Neri is buried. The order spread widely in the C17 and C18, but contracted following the French Revolution and during the Italian Risorgimento. It was revived, especially in England, by John Newman, who had been an Anglican clergyman, but converted to Catholicism in 1845 and was then ordained priest in Rome in 1847. He founded the first Oratorian congregation in Birmingham in 1848, followed the following year by a second house in London. The first Birmingham community was based at Maryvale and then moved to a former gin distillery in Digbeth, where the community worked with the poor. Pope Pius IX had charged Newman with converting the educated classes, as well as the poor, and for this reason he moved the community to Edgbaston in 1852. The present House was built in that year, together with a temporary church. In 1859 he founded the Oratory School, a boarding school which was intended to be run on different lines to the Benedictine abbey schools which had previously dominated Catholic education in England. The school hall, which fronts Hagley Road, was designed by Henry Clutton in 1861-2 with a cloister range behind of 1872-3. All three buildings exist on the same site and physically overlap. Newman continued to live in the Oratory House as one of the community, even after his appointment as Cardinal in 1879, up until his death in 1890. In September 2010 Newman was beatified.

The church that John Newman had built in 1853 was designed by Terence Flanagan, who had also built the Oratory Priests' House. Despite ambitious designs by Louis Joseph Duc, also of 1853, and H R Yeoville Thomason, of 1860 (both in a Lombard Romanesque style), the initial construction was architecturally modest, and the roof timbers were salvaged from an abandoned factory. To this John Hungerford Pollen added an aisle with a round-arched arcade and an apse and transepts in 1858, but the essential form of the Flanagan church survived until after Newman’s death. In the following years it was decided to build a new church as a fitting tribute to the Cardinal and his work. The foundation stone of the new church, designed by E Doran Webb, was laid in 1903 and it was officially opened six years later. At its southern (ritual west) end it incorporates cloister bays of the former Oratory School, designed by Henry Clutton, of 1872-3, as well as the chapel of St Philip Neri (now dedicated to Cardinal Newman) designed by Pollen and built in 1858. The Shrine of St Philip Neri was designed by G B Cox and added to the north-west corner of the church (ritual north-east) in 1927.

Following the removal of the Oratory School to a site in Berkshire the school at Edgbaston was renamed St Philip's Grammar School. This has closed on the present site and the C19 buildings are now used as parish rooms.

Cardinal John Newman was beatified in September 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Birmingham.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of the Immaculate Conception (Birmingham Oratory), The Oratory Priests' House and The Oratory School Buildings are listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural quality and fittings: the group of three, inter-related Oratory buildings – church, school and priests’ house – have considerable design quality and form a unified whole; the design and craftsmanship of the fittings of the church are of very high quality;

* Survival of the original plan: the church, priests’ house and school are all very largely as they were originally completed and although the function of the school buildings has changed, its appearance is little altered;

* Interrelated grouping: the three parts of the group show the religious mission of the Congregation of the Oratory as interpreted by John Newman with a central church, its attendant priesthood and school.

Bronze, 81 x 70 x 41 cm, 1947 (fondu en 1949, fpndation Giacometti, Paris.

En décembre 1946, Giacometti publie dans la revue suisse "Labyrinthe" un texte qui associe librement dans la tradition surréaliste des fragments de rêve et des faits réels et/ou imaginaires, actuels et anciens. Le cauchemar d'une araignée menaçante suspendue par un fil au plafond s'y juxtapose au récit de la mort récente d'un voisin, qui lui avait brutalement remis en mémoire une autre mort dont il avait été témoin en 1921. Cet ancien souvenir revenait avec la puissance d'une hallucination, dans laquelle les morts envahissaient l'espace et menaçaient les vivants, devenus immobiles, bouche ouverte, yeux figés. Reprenant le dispositif de la "Boule suspendue" surréaliste où un espace est délimité par des lignes dessinant une cage, Giacometti en approfondit le caractère dérangeant en faisant déborder la pointe du nez hors du cadre. Le "Nez" y est suspendu comme l'énorme araignée brune de la description du rêve.

Comme l'a observé Agnès de la Beaumelle, le cou est traité comme une crosse de revolver et le nez devient un canon pointé sur le spectateur. Il existe deux versions en plâtre de cette oeuvre, celle polychrome exposée en 1948 à la galerie Pierre Matisse de New York, plus barbare d'aspect et plus proche de la sculpture océanienne (fondation Giacometti, Zurich) et celle aujourd'hui au Musée national d'art moderne de Paris, moins rocailleuse, au nez plus effilé, probablement exécutée vers 1949, lorsque Giacometti prépare trois expositions pour 1950, à New York, à Paris (repoussée à 1951) et à Bâle. C'est de cette deuxième version que Giacometti exécuta un troisième plâtre qui servit à la fonte en bronze à partir de 1964, d'abord pour la Fondation Maeght (inaugurée en 1964) et pour les expositions rétrospectives de Londres et de New York en 1965, montrant l'importance particulière que lui attachait Giacometti au sein de sa création (cf. fondation Giacometti).

Sterling, Glass. Sawn, Soldered, Riveted, Chased, Repousse. Adjustable.

Relief, or relievo rilievo, is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting. There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief /ˌbɑːrɪˈliːf/), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

Rock reliefs are those carved into solid rock in the open air (if inside caves, whether natural or man-made, they are more likely to be called "rock-cut"). This type is found in many cultures, in particular those of the Ancient Near East and Buddhist countries. A stela is a single standing stone; many of these carry reliefs.

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices (see gallery). Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

BAS RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief", from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals - where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques" or plaquettes, which may be set in furniture or framed, or just kept as they are, a popular form for European collectors, especially in the Renaissance.

Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced.

These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

WIKIPEDIA

A SEMI-CIRCULAR GOLD AND ENAMEL PLAQUE AND FLORAL DECORATION, PERSIA, 19TH CENTURY

the gold sheet body decorated in repoussé and enamelled with pink, blue, green, white, orange and yellow with a central cusped cartouche issuing four pendant palmettes, the central inscription reserved against a foliate ground, surrounded by bouquets and vases of rose, peony and iris, bordered by a band of scrolling vine and a register of rose bouquets below

21.5cm. max. width