Relief facts for kids

For other uses, see Relief (disambiguation).

Persian relief from Qajar era in the style of Persepolis, located at Tangeh Savashi.

Relief is a way of making sculptures or carvings. You start with a flat stone or wooden base, and take small parts away until you have made the art you want.

Reliefs are found around the world. They can be used to decorate buildings, such as temples. Usually the artist makes reliefs of figures, such as people or animals.

Rock relief at Naqsh-e Rustam; the Persian Sassanian emperor Shapur I (on horseback) with Roman emperors submitting to him

In bas-relief, only a bit of the base is taken away. The figure is quite flat and this is especially common in friezes. An alto-relief is where the artist takes away a lot of the base material. This can be very detailed.

Famous reliefs

Famous reliefs include:

Great Altar of Pergamon, now at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin
Lions and dragons from the Ishtar Gate, Babylon
Temple of Karnak in Egypt
Angkor Wat in Cambodia
Lion Capital of Asoka, the national symbol of India
glyphs and artwork of the Maya civilization
The monument to the Confederacy at Stone Mountain, Georgia
Borobudur temple, Java, Indonesia
The Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon now housed at the British Museum.
The representation of Monticello on a US nickel.

Images for kids

Greek couple in high relief
Palmyra Figure in British Museum
Angels from Clonfert Cathedral, Co Galway, Ireland (adjusted to highlight relief)
A face of the high-relief Frieze of Parnassus round the base of the Albert Memorial in London. Most of the heads and many feet are completely undercut, but the torsos are "engaged" with the surface behind.
Lorenzo Ghiberti's cast gilt-bronze "Gates of Paradise" at the Florence Baptistery in Florence, Italy, combines high-relief main figures with backgrounds mostly in low relief.
Low-relief on Roman sestertius, 238 AD
Bas-relief of 9th-century Candi Borobudur. The temple possesses 1,460 panels of bas-relief narrating Buddhist scriptures.
A sunk-relief depiction of Pharaoh Akhenaten with his wife Nefertiti and daughters. The main background has not been removed, merely that in the immediate vicinity of the sculpted form. Note how strong shadows are needed to define the image.
French Gothic diptych, 25 cm (9.8 in) high, with crowded scenes from the Life of Christ, c. 1350–1365.
Sunk relief as low relief within a sunk outline, from the Luxor Temple in Egypt, carved in very hard granite
low relief within a sunk outline, linear sunk relief in the hieroglyphs, and high relief (right), from Luxor
"Blocked-out" unfinished low relief of Ahkenaten and Nefertiti; unfinished Greek and Persian high-reliefs show the same method of beginning a work.
Bas-relief in Persepolis – a symbol of Zoroastrian Nowruz – in day of a spring equinox power of eternally fighting bull (personifying the Earth), and a lion (personifying the Sun), are equal
Atropos cutting the thread of life. Ancient Greek low relief.
Section on the Ara Pacis, Rome, with varied levels of relief
Roman funerary relief with frame at original level, but not sunk relief
Roman Hetaera, Relief, around 2nd century, Head is missing
The 12th century Romanesque portal of Christ in Majesty at Moissac Abbey moves between low and high relief in a single figure.
Harbaville Triptych, Byzantine ivory
Baroque marble high-relief by Francesco Grassia, 1670, Rome
Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, 1897, Boston, combining free-standing elements with high and low relief.
A relatively modern high relief (depicting shipbuilding) in Bishopsgate, London. Note that some elements jut out of the frame of the image.
Art Deco tiled bas relief, old Press-Citizen Building, Iowa City, Iowa.
Colossal Hindu rock reliefs at Unakoti, Tripura, India