Relief

For other uses, see Relief (disambiguation).

A Persian mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo) from the Qajar era, located at Tangeh Savashi in Iran.

Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus 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 or wood is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique thus involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise with little artistic effect when applied to the background further away from the immediate vicinity of the depicted form itself. In other materials such as metal, clay, stucco or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background.

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 commonly used: high relief (alto-rilievo), mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief) and rilievo stiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. Thus it is possible to have a sunken relief in any of the 4 preceding styles. The opposite of relief sculpture is "counter-relief", intaglio or cavo-rilievo where the field or background is left intact and the form itself is removed. It is thus not a raising of the form, but a lowering. Sunk relief is most found in Ancient Egypt.

Reliefs are common throughout the world, for example on the walls of monumental buildings. The frieze in the classical Corinthian order is often enriched with bas-relief (low relief). Alto-relievo (high relief) can be seen in the pediments of classical temples such as the Parthenon. Several panels or sections of relief together may represent a sequence of scenes.

Types

Lorenzo Ghiberti's gilded bronze "Doors of Paradise" at the Baptistery, Florence combine high-relief main figures with backgrounds mostly in low relief. Note the distant mountains in low-relief. Depicted is Abraham before the Angels

There are three main types of relief. 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. Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms.

Low-relief on Sestertius of Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus, 238 AD

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. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern cultures, and also Meso-America a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition; these images would be painted after carving. In later Western art, it is 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. Bas-relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common.

Mid-relief or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and less often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead.

High relief

Detail in high relief from the Classical Greek Elgin Marbles. Some front limbs are actually detached from the background completely, while the centaur's left rear leg is in low relief.

High relief (or alto rilievo, 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 may even be undercut detatching them completely from the field. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture. It uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives very much the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have.

Most of the many figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and it has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, while smaller decorative areas such as friezes use may low relief. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone.

Sunk relief

A sunk-relief depiction of Pharaoh Akhenaten with his wife Nefertiti and daughters. The main background has not been removed, merely that in the immediate vicinity of the sculpted form. Note how strong shadows are needed to define the image.

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 modelled 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.

The technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gems, where an image is fully modelled in a "negative" manner, going into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in 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 are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back" in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is hammered from behind, automatically producing a relief.

Notable reliefs

Notable examples of reliefs include:

• Persepolis, 70 km northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province, Iran, treasury relief
• Naqsh-e Rustam, 12 km northwest of Persepolis in Fars province, Iran, rock-face relief
• Naqsh-e Rajab,12 km north of Persepolis in Fars province, Iran, rock-face relief
• Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Keystone, South Dakota, high relief
• Great Altar of Pergamon, now at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, mostly high relief
• Lions and dragons from the Ishtar Gate, Babylon, low relief
• Temple of Karnak in Egypt, sunken and low relief
• Angkor Wat in Cambodia, mostly low relief
• The images of the elephant, horse, bull and lion at the bottom of the Lion Capital of Asoka, the national symbol of India (the capital itself is a full sculpture)
• Glyphs and artwork of the Maya civilization, low relief
• The monument to the Confederacy at Stone Mountain, Georgia
• Borobudur temple, Java Island Java, Indonesia
• The Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, now housed at the British Museum, high and low relief.
• Frieze of Parnassus, high relief
• Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, Boston, mostly high relief, with the main figure in the round.
• Stone Mountain, Georgia USA, the largest bas-relief in the world.
• Mamallapuram, Mahabalipuram, some of the finest and detailed enormous bas relief in the world.

See also

• Repoussé and chasing

Gallery

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  Sunk relief as low relief within a sunk outline, from the Luxor Temple in Egypt, carved in very hard granite
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  low relief within a sunk outline, linear sunk relief in the hieroglyphs, and high relief (right), from Luxor
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  Bas-relief in Persepolis - a symbol of Zoroastrian Nowruz - in day of a spring equinox power of eternally fighting bull (personifying the Earth), and a lion (personifying the Sun), are equal
• Two Persian Soldiers in Persepolis
  Two Persian Soldiers in Persepolis
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  Rock-face relief at Naqsh-e Rustam of Iranian emperor Shapur I (on horseback) capturing Roman emperor Valerian (kneeing) and Philip the Arab (standing)
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  Egyptian figures in "alto relievo"
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  Atropos cutting the thread of life. Ancient Greek low relief.
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  Yaxchilan Lintel 24, a Mayan carving depicting a blood sacrifice
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  A bas-relief at Banteay Srei in Cambodia depicts Ravana shaking Mount Kailasa, the residence of Siva.
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  12th century Romanesque portal of Christ in Majesty at Moissac Abbey
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  Angled view of a panel with the story of Abraham from the Florence Gates of Paradise (see above).
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  Side view of high relief: Madonna and Child, marble of c. 1500/1510 by an unknown north Italian sculptor
• Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, 1897, Boston, combining free-standing elements with high and low relief.
  Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, 1897, Boston, combining free-standing elements with high and low relief.
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  A relatively modern high relief (depicting shipbuilding) in Bishopsgate, London. Note that some elements jut out of the frame of the image.
• Art Deco tiled bas relief, old Press-Citizen Building, Iowa City, Iowa.
  Art Deco tiled bas relief, old Press-Citizen Building, Iowa City, Iowa.
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  Lorenzo Ghiberti's gilded bronze "Doors of Paradise" at the Baptistery, Florence combine high-relief main figures with backgrounds mostly in low relief.
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  Elizabeth Wyn Wood's Bas-relief at Ryerson University in Toronto

External links

• Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, "American Relief Sculpture", Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
• Melissa Hardiman, "Bas-Relief Pathfinder"