Relief facts for kids

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

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  Side view of Lorenzo Ghiberti's cast gilt-bronze Gates of Paradise at the Florence Baptistery in Florence, Italy, combining high-relief main figures with backgrounds mostly in low relief

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  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

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  A common mixture of high and low relief, in the Roman Ara Pacis, placed to be seen from below. Low relief ornament at bottom

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  Low-relief on Roman sestertius, 238 AD

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  A low-relief dating to circa 2000 BC, from the kingdom of Simurrum, modern Iraq

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  High-relief deities at Khajuraho, India

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  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.

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  French Gothic diptych, 25 cm (9.8 in) high, with crowded scenes from the Life of Christ, c. 1350–1365

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  "Blocked-out" unfinished low relief of Ahkenaten and Nefertiti; unfinished Greek and Persian high-reliefs show the same method of beginning a work.

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  Persian low or bas-relief in Persepolis – a symbol of Zoroastrian Nowruz – at the spring equinox the power of the bull (personifying Earth) and lion (personifying the Sun) are equal.

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  Assyrian low relief, Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal, North Palace, Nineveh

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  Atropos cutting the thread of life. Ancient Greek low relief

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  Donatello, Madonna and Child in rilievo stiacciato or shallow relief

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  French 20th-century low relief

See also

In Spanish: Relieve (arte) para niños