Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Suggestive of or having the qualities of sculpture.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Possessing the character of sculpture; resembling sculpture; chiseled; hence, clean-cut and well-proportioned; statue-like; grand rather than beautiful or pretty: as, sculpturesque features.

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

  • adjective After the manner of sculpture; resembling, or relating to, sculpture.

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

  • adjective Like or suggesting sculpture: shapely, statuelike, etc.

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

  • adjective resembling sculpture

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sculpture +‎ -esque

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Examples

  • The Classical style has well been called sculpturesque, the Romantic picturesque.

    A History of English Literature Robert Huntington Fletcher

  • I see Louis, stone-carved, sculpturesque; Neville, scissor-cutting, exact; Susan with eyes like lumps of crystal; Jinny dancing like a flame, febrile, hot, over dry earth; and Rhoda the nymph of the fountain always wet.

    The Waves 2003

  • The exposition of classical-romantic in Chapter 11 of De l'Allemagne, including its parallel of classical and sculpturesque, romantic and picturesque, the contrast between Greek drama of event and modern drama of character, the poetry of Fate versus the poetry of

    ROMANTICISM IN LITERATURE REN 1968

  • The distinction of classical-romantic occurs for the first time in Coleridge's lectures, given in 1811, and is there clearly derived from Schlegel, since the dis - tinction is associated with that of organic and mechan - ical, painterly and sculpturesque, in close verbal adherence to Schlegel's phrasing.

    ROMANTICISM IN LITERATURE REN 1968

  • In addition, terms of plastic arts such as “chiaroscuro,” “Claudian,” and “sculpturesque,” when applied to literature, are often limited to similar content rather than to similar form (Giovannini, 1950).

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas JOHN GRAHAM 1968

  • Strong young arms laced the straining Five into a group as motionless and as sculpturesque as statuary, while between their bodies and around them there came into being a gigantic Lens: a Lens whose splendor filled the entire room with radiance.

    Children of the Lens Smith, E. E. 1954

  • As he looked dazedly out of the window into the dripping darkness, a familiar, sculpturesque head and shoulders moved into the truncated tetrahedron of yellow light being cast out through the fine glass into the rain.

    A Case Of Conscience Blish, James 1953

  • Instead of extravagance and grotesqueness, instead of the diversity, the rich ornamentation, the heaven-soaring pinnacles and spires of Gothic imagination -- we have in the _Helena_ sculpturesque repose, simplicity, dignity and proportion.

    The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust'

  • At the outer gate sat two or three aged monks, picturesque and sculpturesque at once, like enchanted porters at the doors of some spellbound palace, their long, gray beards and sunken, listless eyes according with their own and the convent's external dilapidation.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 Various

  • We cannot help thinking that the mere arrangement of their figures by such painters as Cima da Conegliano and Francesco Francia, the architectural regularity of their disposition, the sculpturesque dignity of their attitudes, and the consequent impression of simplicity and repose which they convey, have much to do with the religious effect they produce on the mind, as contrasted with the more dramatic and picturesque conceptions of later artists.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 31, May, 1860 Various

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