Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See rilievo.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun See relief, n., 5.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun art relief (surface carving)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun sculpture consisting of shapes carved on a surface so as to stand out from the surrounding background

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Italian rilievo; see bas-relief.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Italian rilievo

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Examples

  • The cedar-wood was beautifully embellished with figures in relievo, representing clusters of foliage, open flowers, cherubims, and palm trees.

    Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 1871

  • The relievo was his favourite performance, and very justly so.

    In the South Seas Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

  • Perhaps the artist has bee brought in to polychrome a plaster relievo for an architectural decoration, and it is some third party sculptors studio.

    Easel on Rails James Gurney 2009

  • All the canals have bridges at stated distances; these bridges are bordered with balustrades of white marble sculptured in basso-relievo.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like the profile figures having only half a nose which are sculptured on monuments, and that we shall be like tallies.

    thispain Diary Entry thispain 2006

  • There was a time when the two sexes were only one, but now God has halved them, — much as the Lacedaemonians have cut up the Arcadians, — and if they do not behave themselves he will divide them again, and they will hop about with half a nose and face in basso relievo.

    The Symposium 2006

  • And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like the profile figures having only half a nose which are sculptured on monuments, and that we shall be like tallies.

    The Symposium 2006

  • Baronet, kneeling in a square beard opposite his wife in a ruff: a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task — and so forth.

    The History of Pendennis 2006

  • The old shabby church showed, as usual, its quaint extent of roofage and the relievo skeleton on one gable, still blackened with the fire of thirty years ago.

    Lay Morals 2005

  • The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo.

    Walden 2004

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