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:
“In Tsegihi,
In the house made of dawn,
In the house made of the evening twilight,
In the house made of the dark cloud, ...
Oh, male divinity!
With your moccasins of dark cloud, come to us.”
—Administration in the State of Ariz, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It is an old saying in the town that “most any fellow with a chaw in his jaw can sit on his front porch and spit down the chimney of a neighbor’s house.””
—Administration in the State of Ariz, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)