Relief
Relief, or relievo rilievo, is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, 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 or wood 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.
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Famous quotes containing the word relief:
“[T]he late Samuel McChord Crothers, genial wit and essayist, ... after listening to the speeches at a certain Harvard Commencement remarked that he gathered that the world had been in great danger, but that all would now be well.”
—For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Until we devise means of discovering workers who are temperamentally irked by monotony it will be well to take for granted that the majority of human beings cannot safely be regimented at work without relief in the form of education and recreation and pleasant surroundings.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Boys, when you see the enemy, fire and then run, and as I am a little lame, I will run now.”
—For the State of Rhode Island, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)