Sculptural relief. Types of sculptural reliefs Architectural relief

23.06.2020

There are two main types of plastic art: round sculpture and relief. Their capabilities and features are very different. The round sculpture “lives” in free space; it can be walked around and viewed from all sides. Relief (from the Italian rilievo – “protrusion, convexity, rise”) is similar to a three-dimensional drawing made in clay or stone. On a flat surface of stone, wood or other material, the sculptor sculpts, cuts or carves an image of figures, objects, often creating complex story compositions. In this case, the image remains connected to the background, protrudes from it convexly or very slightly, remaining flat.
I. Dvorkina

RELIEF(French relief, from Latin relevare – to lift) – one of the types of sculpture. Unlike a round sculpture, which can be walked around from all sides, the relief is located on a plane and is designed mainly for frontal perception. The relief may have its own easel meaning and be part of an architectural or sculptural work. The relief can protrude above the background plane and go deeper into it.

Types of relief

Depending on how three-dimensional the figures are depicted and how connected they are to the background, three types of relief are distinguished: bas-relief, high relief and counter-relief.

Giacomo Manzu. "The Death of Abel" The Gates of Death

Bas-relief called a low, fairly flat relief in which the figures retreat from the background plane by less than half. As a rule, the bas-relief acts as a component of an architectural structure and plays a decorative and narrative role in it.
The appearance of bas-relief preceded round sculpture. Conventional images of bears and bison, carved on the rock surface, can be found in the caves of prehistoric people who lived in glacial period. All religious buildings of deep antiquity that have come down to us are decorated with ornamental relief motifs. The majestic temples of the pharaonic era are entirely covered with relief images, which, like the pages of a book designed to last for eternity, tell the story of the origin and deeds of the Egyptian gods.

Bas-relief is used on coins and medals.

Fragment of the Parthenon frieze. Marble. 5th century BC

IN high relief Unlike a bas-relief, a sculptural image recedes significantly from the background or appears in almost full volume. In high relief the figures appear very convex, almost round. Sometimes they look like statues placed against a flat background. High relief is especially sensitive to lighting. In bright, especially lateral, light, three-dimensional figures cast strong shadows that seem to “fight” the light, indicating all the curves of the plastic form, emphasizing small details.

Deep relief ( counter-relief) less common than convex relief. An image of this type does not protrude above the background, but, on the contrary, goes deeper. Most of all, such a relief resembles a strict drawing: the contours of the image seem to be carved by a sculptor on the surface of the stone. Figures and objects remain flat. This type of relief is often

found in the art of the ancient Egyptians. The mighty columns of ancient Egyptian temples are covered from top to bottom with such a sculptural “pattern.”

Relief capabilities.

A sculptor working in relief has more room for imagination than a master creating a round sculpture. After all, in relief you can depict almost everything that is accessible to painting and graphics: mountains, rivers, trees, clouds in the sky, houses... It is in relief that multi-figure plot compositions have been created at all times. Relief as a type of sculpture was often associated with architectural structure. Magnificent reliefs decorated the temples of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece, triumphal arches Rome, medieval cathedrals and palace buildings of modern times...

Scenic relief.

Cameo Gonzaga

The relief, in its features, resembles a picturesque picture, received the name picturesque. In pictorial relief, distant objects are depicted as small and flatter, while those that are closer, on the contrary, are sculpted to almost full volume. It turns out that the sculptor applies the same laws of linear perspective as the painter. In a picturesque relief, the background ceases to be smooth (as in bas-relief and high relief) and turns into a semblance of a landscape with trees, clouds, mountains, or reproduces the interior of the room where the action takes place. The creator of this type of relief is considered to be the brilliant Italian sculptor of the 15th century. Donatello.

A remarkable example of a picturesque relief is the “Gates of Heaven” of the baptistery (baptistery), built in Florence. The sculptor placed compositions on the door leaves biblical themes. In this relief, one admires the subtlety of the transition of spatial plans - from an almost round sculpture to a fine engraving of the background.

"Divine Game of Shadows"

Any sculpture is sensitive to light. We can say that it comes to life only under the influence of light. It will look different in top and side light, in cloudy weather or, conversely, in bright sun. Sculptors must take this into account in their work. In museum halls where sculpture is exhibited, there must be carefully thought-out lighting, otherwise viewers will not understand or appreciate all the plastic merits of the work of art. “Shadows, divine play of shadows on antique marbles! We can say that shadows are partial to masterpieces. Shadows cling to them and endow them with decoration,” wrote the famous French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The truth of Rodin’s words can be seen by looking at a fragment of the Parthenon frieze - one of the few fragments of the magnificent sculptural decoration of the main temple of ancient Athens that has reached us. The marble reliefs seemed to come to life under the rays of the Greek sun. The shadows cast by the figures of the men and hidden in the folds of the girls’ clothes created a sense of movement and gave the illusion of full volume to the relief images protruding from the background.

Birth of Aphrodite. relief. Marble. Sicily.460 BC

Gems.

Since ancient times, jeweler carvers have carved reliefs on precious and semi-precious stones, making jewelry and seals. Such images are called gems (from the Latin gemma - “ gem"). A recessed image, cut deep into a solid mineral, is called an intaglio, and a convex image, protruding above the surface of the stone, is called a cameo... Often gems were made from multi-layered stones, and the master had the opportunity, when processing the stone, to make the background one color, and the main image another.

Natalya Sokolnikova.

RELIEF

- (from the Latin relevo - I raise) a sculptural image on a plane. The inextricable connection with the plane, which is the physical basis and background of the image, is specific feature relief as a type of sculpture. The most important means of expression, inherent in relief - the deployment of a composition on a plane, the possibility of perspective construction of spatial plans and the creation of spatial illusions - make it possible to reproduce complex multi-figure scenes, as well as architectural and landscape motifs in relief. The relief can be included in the composition of a wall, vault, or other parts of architectural or sculptural works, but can also act as an independent easel work. Based on the relation of the image to the background plane, a distinction is made between recessed and convex relief. In-depth relief (otherwise known as koylanoglyph or "en creux" relief) became widespread mainly in the architecture of Ancient Egypt, as well as in ancient Eastern and ancient glyptics. A type of in-depth relief is the so-called. counter-relief, also used in the manufacture of intaglios; strictly negative in relation to convex relief, it is designed for a plastic imprint in the form of a miniature bas-relief. Convex relief, subdivided, in turn, into low bas-relief and high high relief, is much more common: it was known already in the Paleolithic era, later in Ancient Egypt, Assyria, India, China and received special development in ancient art (reliefs on the pediments, metopes and friezes of ancient Greek temples, on ancient Roman triumphal arches and columns, etc.), during the Renaissance and in the sculpture of subsequent times.

(Ill. Lion hunt. Ashurbanipal II. Assyria. 9th century BC, stone.)

Dictionary of fine art terms. 2012

Bas-relief or low relief

The most simple example The use of this technique are ordinary coins. It is quite obvious that the images on them have a minimum relative height, practically indistinguishable when viewed from the side. If you place the coin in your palm and look at it from the front, the three-dimensional effect will be maximum.

The very idea of making a bas-relief implies ease of cutting, low manufacturability and low cost of production, therefore it became most widespread in most world cultures, starting with Ancient Egypt, the countries of the Middle East and the civilizations of Central and North America. In addition, bas-reliefs were often painted over various shades in order to “raise” the image as much as possible. To this day, ancient bas-reliefs have survived mainly unpainted - time does not spare paint much faster than the statue itself. However, chemical analysis allows us to confidently assert that most of the bas-reliefs were painted.

Historians also know more exotic types of bas-reliefs, for example, the Ishtar Gate from ancient Babylon. The animal sculptures on them are created using molded bricks. Egyptian and Roman bas-reliefs were made using plaster, and, as a result, most of these bas-reliefs have practically not survived to this day.

IN European culture the most famous bas-reliefs were made of wood and were used as elements of church altars.

Bas-reliefs of a Buddhist temple,
Eastern India

But bas-reliefs are most often found in the technique of making Buddhist monuments in India and Southeast Asia. The temples in the Ajanta and Ellora caves contain colossal images of gods carved from single pieces of stone. Borodulur Temple in Central Java (Indonesia) contains almost one and a half thousand bas-reliefs telling about the birth of Buddha. On the same island is the Prambanan Temple, with bas-reliefs illustrating the plot of the Hindu poem Ramayana.

High relief

Relief sculptures, in which at least half of the volume is above the plane, first appeared most noticeably in the art of Ancient Greece. Often these were almost independent sculptures, separated from the surface of the stone and intersecting with each other to create a complete effect of depth.

High reliefs of Greek and Roman sarcophagi were made by drilling, without chisels. Their compositions were maximally saturated with figures and characters - for example, the Sarcophagus of Ludovisi. The Middle Ages marked the full spread of high relief techniques, especially among the Greeks. During the Renaissance, high reliefs were given a second life. Their use was especially noticeable in funerary art, and later in neoclassical pediments and urban monuments.

In Hindu monumental sculpture, high reliefs coexisted with bas-reliefs, not much inferior to them in popularity. The group of temples at Khajuraho is the most obvious example of the use of high relief techniques by Indian sculptors.

Counter-relief and koylanaglyph

These types of relief have not received global distribution in funerary art. Some civilizations, for example, Ancient Egypt, used in-depth relief quite widely, but beyond the borders of this state this type The sculpture did not receive significant distribution.

Various types of reliefs are often used in the manufacture of grave monuments and as overlay elements for them, as well as in the creation of ritual and memorial tablets, including for a columbar wall or family columbarium. Less labor-intensive and, accordingly, more affordable, bas-relief is ideally suited for decorating a tombstone or granite slab. This technique is perfectly used both for creating dynamic life-size sculptures and for small, “bust” formats.

The company that manufactures tombstones in your area, you will find in the Making of monuments section of our ritual directory

Published: September 6, 2010

RELIEF

The word "relief" comes from the Italian "relevio", which means "convexity", "protrusion". In relief the image is created volumetric form, only partially protruding above the flat surface. Like any sculpture, it has three dimensions, but the third is abbreviated and conditional. In other words, it becomes, as it were, an intermediate link between a round sculpture and an image on a plane. The plane is both the technical basis and, at the same time, the background on which the composition is located.

The relief was especially common in the Ancient East: in India, Mesopotamia, Cambodia (Kampuchea), Iran. Scenes of Assyrian palaces and Persian kings in Nineveh and Persepolis were completely covered with reliefs. The Assyrians depicted scenes of war and hunting; they had no equal in recreating the actions and feelings of animals, they knew how to show them furious, suffering, and struggling. The Persepolis reliefs asserted royal power: they depicted warriors with swords, spears and bows and peoples bearing tribute to the “king of kings” - the Babylonians led him with bulls, the Armenians with horses, the Elamites with tamed lions, the Arabs with camels. Due to the fact that all the figures were the same size and walked in the same direction, the impression was created that many people and animals were following them: the simplest method of repetition achieved both a peculiar rhythm and a feeling of the majesty of what was happening.

By scale eastern reliefs far superior to European ones. Sometimes they cover the entire wall completely, sometimes they go along it with a frieze - a horizontal strip located in its upper part. They are always grandiose. The total value of the frieze going from hall to hall in the palace in Dur-Sharrukin in Assyria reaches six thousand square meters. The Elephant Terrace frieze at Angkor, the old capital of Cambodia, depicts life-size elephants.

Temples of Cambodia: Relief Angkor Wat

The images on the reliefs are for the most part very realistic. The reliefs of Angkor are a veritable encyclopedia of everyday life. folk life. N. and they depict hunters shooting birds with bows; fishermen casting nets into the water; masons cutting stones; cooks scurrying around the stoves - they cook rice, bake cakes; a tightrope walker boldly walking along a rope stretched in the air; a boy stealing something from the stall of a dozing merchant at the market; an excited group of "fans" caught up in a cockfight. Even in such solemn reliefs as the relief of the palace in Persepolis, the realism of the details is strictly observed: the border of the clothing of one of the kings depicted on it exactly reproduces the original border found by archaeologists in one of the oldest burials.

The relief is divided into three main types: deep relief, bas-relief And high relief. Recessed relief is a relief not with convex contours, but with contours cut into the depths of a slab or wall - the planar image is preserved here in its entirety. This is a graphic and very clear technique: despite the play of light and shadow caused on its surface by light modeling, the connection with the drawing is never destroyed.

Deep relief

Deep relief was used in Ancient Egypt. They decorated both miniature caskets and huge temples. Reliefs on temples designed to be viewed from long distances, had clear compositions and clear contours. These contours became especially deep when depicting the pharaohs and their entourage; their figures were modeled three-dimensionally, while minor characters were “drawn” superficially and seemed flat. This technique replaced the European perspective for the Egyptians.

Bas-relief

The word "bas-relief" comes from the French Bas-relief and means "low relief". The figures depicted in it protrude no more than half their volume. A classic example of a bas-relief is the frieze of the ancient Greek temple of the Parthenon (442-435 BC), which depicts the solemn procession of the Athenians to the temple of Athena, the patron goddess of the city. Young men holding hot horses, horsemen galloping towards the sacred hill, teenagers carrying bowls of wine, old men with olive branches, a symbol of peace - all this is depicted on the frieze almost without reduction in perspective: the bas-relief does not destroy the plane of the wall, but seems to spread parallel to it, becoming an organic part of the temple. One of the most beautiful fragments of the frieze is the procession of girls who wove a blanket for Athena; they move leisurely, smoothly, their gestures are majestically slow - the rhythm of the composition is based on the alternation of their poses. To show the spiritual community of the procession, the unanimity of all who compose it, the sculptor depicts all the heads - both pedestrians and horsemen - on the same level, this technique is called isokephaly. The composition of the bas-relief develops, as if following the procession (it is not for nothing that they inspect it while moving behind the image), the background of the frieze is completely smooth, attention is focused on the silhouettes of the walking figures.

Multi-figure reliefs, as a rule, are narrative, and their “stories” can be much more comprehensive than the “stories” of round sculptural groups. The sculptor does not have to express his idea in a “stopped moment,” and his narrative often unfolds in the same chronological order in which the events being recreated occurred. This is clearly expressed in the Roman reliefs that decorated triumphal arches and columns. Erected in honor of the victory over the Dacians, the thirty-eight-meter column of Trajan (c. 111-114 AD) is covered from pedestal to capital with a spiral ribbon of bas-reliefs, telling with protocol precision about Trajan’s campaigns on the Danube. Gradually, one after another, the days of the war are depicted: the construction of a bridge across the Danube, sacrifices to the gods, military councils, receptions of ambassadors, battles, the suicide of the Dacian leader, burning Dacian villages. Very carefully - in detail - the weapons of the Romans, siege weapons, ships, bridges are shown. The role of the commander is carefully emphasized: Trajan is always ahead of the fighting troops. To convince the viewer of this, the author of the reliefs (presumably Apollodorus of Damascus) depicts him ninety times - first in front of one legion, then in front of another. The story ends with the triumphant return of the Romans to their homeland - the final round of reliefs, as if last page books, sums up what has been said.

In Russia in the XVIII-XX centuries. reliefs decorated palaces and public buildings, they completed and continue to complete the pedestals of monuments. On the pedestal of the Leningrad monument to I. A. Krylov, executed in 1848-1855. Pyotr Klodt recreated a whole fabled menagerie: a pug barking at an elephant; a swan, a pike and a crayfish trying to move a cart with luggage; fox reaching for grapes. This cheerful round dance surrounding the figure of the fabulist complements the monument.

Multi-figure reliefs, as a rule, are narrative, and their “stories” can be much more comprehensive than the “stories” of round sculptural groups. The sculptor does not have to express his idea in a “stopped moment,” and his narrative often unfolds in the same chronological order, in which the events being recreated took place. This is clearly expressed in the Roman reliefs that decorated triumphal arches and columns. Erected in honor of the victory over the Dacians, the thirty-eight-meter column of Trajan (c. 111-114 AD) is covered from pedestal to capital with a spiral ribbon of bas-reliefs, telling with protocol precision about Trajan’s campaigns on the Danube. Gradually, one after another, the days of the war are depicted: the construction of a bridge across the Danube, sacrifices to the gods, military councils, receptions of ambassadors, battles, the suicide of the Dacian leader, burning Dacian villages. Very carefully - in detail - the Roman weapons, siege weapons, ships, bridges are shown. The role of the commander is carefully emphasized: Trajan is always ahead of the fighting troops. To convince the viewer of this, the author of the reliefs (presumably Apollodorus of Damascus) depicts him ninety times - first in front of one legion, then in front of another. The story ends with the triumphant return of the Romans to their homeland - the final round of reliefs, like the last page of a book, sums up what has been told.

A unique contribution to sculpture was medieval Russian relief or, as it is more often called, Russian stone carving of the 12th-13th centuries, its center was Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'. Covered with a carpet of ornamental and fairy-tale patterns, the massive walls of Russian churches seemed both monumental and decorative. Like all ancient Russian art, carving was closely connected with the church, but this did not make it either ascetic or dogmatic. On the walls of the Dmitrov Cathedral in Vladimir there are relatively few actual Christian images - only forty-six out of five hundred and sixty-six; they are literally drowned in the mass of animal, fairy-tale, and fantastic subjects. Carvers borrow them everywhere: from folk ornaments, fairy tales, surrounding nature, ancient miniatures, the Bible and even from medieval novels. The story of Alexander the Great's journey to heaven is taken entirely from the popular adventure story "Alexandria". Sitting in a wicker basket harnessed by fantastic monsters, griffins, Alexander holds small, newborn lion cubs above his head; Seeing a tasty prey, the griffins rush towards it, and the basket rises into the air.

decoration of St. George's Cathedral in Yuryev-Polsky

The sculptural decoration of St. George's Cathedral in Yuryev-Polsky is even thicker and more ornate. It rises straight from the ground and becomes part of the architectural details: the capitals of the portals are completely covered with a bizarre pattern of flowers and leaves; the pilasters are decorated with the faces of women and warriors. Images of Christ, angels, saints, enclosed in relief medallions, figures of dragons and vultures are buried in floral ornament. We also see good-natured, smiling, philosophically minded lions dozing in the shade of their tree-like tails. And the Sirins, half-maidens, half-birds, ready at any moment to turn into the legendary birds of sadness and joy. And centaurs dressed in caftans and hats of princely hunters. Centaurs and lions were considered emblematic animals in medieval Rus': they could only be depicted next to princes, personifying their wisdom and strength. But in Russian stone carvings they live on their own and, moreover, they lose their abstractly majestic appearance, becoming fabulous. People's spirit triumphs in it both over princely symbolism and over church institutions.

From: Biryukova Irina, 11043 views

The term “morphosculpture” combines relief forms created “under the predominant influence of exogenous processes developing on the surface of morphostructural elements.” If the main features of the morphostructural relief within the region developed long time and formed mainly in pre-Quaternary times, then in the Quaternary period with its sharp climatic fluctuations, with alternation ice ages and interglacial, with strong changes water regimes of rivers, the formation of modern sculptural relief took place. The sculptural relief was formed at all geological stages of development of the territory, but it was usually almost completely destroyed by the abrasion-accumulative activity of transgressed seas. The Quaternary sculptural relief is quite fully preserved in the visible surface. Its development took place with ongoing modern and modern movements structures, which left an imprint on the sculptural relief formation. However, the “energetics” of external processes was significantly higher than endogenous ones, so the boundaries of sculptural relief complexes often do not coincide with the boundaries of morphostructures. If the latter in the region are predominantly meridionally oriented, then the sculptural zones have a more latitudinal orientation, which indicates their “climatic” conditionality.

The combination of structural plains of different heights and sculptural forms of different genesis (water, glacial, karst, etc.) within the territory under consideration has significant differences.

Fluvial relief

On the territory of the Bryansk region in the Neogene-Quaternary times, the leading role in the development of sculptural relief belonged to flowing waters. Rivers, confined primarily to tectonic troughs and linear faults, with the general uplift of the region, significantly increased the contrast of the relief, created deep valleys and “recorded” information about the development of the territory in the relief of the valleys. The good preservation of this “information” is due to the fact that a significant area of the region was not covered by glaciers.

In the development of rivers, three age boundaries are distinguished: the time of formation of drainage surfaces (slope), the time of formation of the river (or hydraulic network), the time of formation of the river valley. The formation of the southwestern slope of the territory dates back to pre-Jurassic times. There is very little information about the Late Paleozoic flow direction. Only the general northeastern direction of the rivers in the Carboniferous period is noted.

The time when the flow turned from the northeast to the southwest apparently occurred at the beginning of the Mesozoic between the Carboniferous and Jurassic. Under the Jurassic deposits, large erosional depressions can be traced, open to the southwest. In the Meso-Cenozoic, the general slope of the basin was preserved.

The formation of rivers in the northern part of the Desna basin occurred as the Cretaceous seas retreated in the Coniacian and Santonian centuries of the Late Cretaceous. By the end of the Early Neogene, a developed river network with a pattern close to the modern one already existed. Initially, the river network of the left bank of the Desna was formed, and somewhat later - the right bank of the Desninsky basin and the Iput basin. The most ancient deposits in the Desna valley are confined to the lower buried terrace, so the age of the valley itself can be determined as Early Pleistocene (Q I). Along paleovalleys in the Desna basin, pre-Quaternary levels are often found, overlain by Oligocene-Miocene (P 3 –N 1) sands and loams of continental origin, which gives reason to consider the age of some ancient valleys to be Neogene.

The Early Pleistocene river network inherited the main depressions of the Pliocene relief. In the glacial zone, many valleys were filled with glacial sediments. Small rivers experienced some restructuring. The valleys large rivers(Dnieper, Ugra, Desna, Bolvy) remained confined to pre-glacial pra-valleys, although their axial parts experienced some lateral displacement.

South of the border of the Dnieper glacier, the river network as a whole has preserved its pre-glacial pattern. Climatic changes and tectonic movements have caused the complex development of valleys here “vertically”.

During the period of glacier retreat (degladiation), numerous hollows of meltwater flow formed on the watersheds. After the edge of the glacier retreated, the rivers that drained these hollows “died off,” and “through” valleys remained in the relief. Individual through valleys or parts thereof are inherited by small rivers (Resseta, Voronitsa, etc.). Numerous through hollows are located in the southwest of the region, along the watersheds of the Iput and Snova rivers. An example is the wide hollow between the villages. Red Mountain and lake Vikholka. The through valleys between the rivers Iput (village of Dobrush) and Tsata, the upper reaches of the rivers Gosoma and Sudost, are well preserved. On the Central Russian Upland, through valleys connect the upper reaches of the rivers of the Oka and Desna, Nerussa and Seva basins.

Sculptural relief. Types of sculptural reliefs Architectural relief

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what RELIEF is in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

Bas-relief or low relief

High relief

Counter-relief and koylanaglyph

RELIEF

Deep relief

Bas-relief