Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bas-relief \Bas`-re*lief"\, n. [F. bas-relief; bas low + relief raised work, relever to raise: cf. It. bassorilievo.] Low relief; sculpture, the figures of which project less than half of their true proportions; -- called also bass-relief and basso-rilievo. See Alto-rilievo.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1660s, from French bas-relief, a loan-translation of Italian basso-rilievo "low relief, raised work."
Wiktionary
n. (alternative spelling of bas relief English)
Usage examples of "bas-relief".
They were all content with the flat bas-relief effects familiar to them in the gates of the Baptistry and the jewel-like decorations of the Campanile.
Lamps that were milky opals self-effulgent filled all the chamber with a soft radiance, in which the bas-reliefs of the high dado, delicately carved, portraying those immortal blooms of amaranth and nepenthe and moly and Elysian asphodel, were seen in all their delicate beauty, and the fair painted pictures of the Lord of Krothering and his lady sister, and of Lord Juss above the great open fireplace with Goldry and Spitfire on his left and right.
The floor was a highly polished black, reflecting the great, glittering electroliers, each one a crystalline complexity, suspended from the shallow dome of the ceiling, which was decorated with ornate bas-reliefs in a floral pattern.
One is the bas-relief signed by Antonianos of Aphrodisias and found some fifty years ago on the property of an agronomic institute, the Fundi Rustici, in the Committee Room of which it is now placed.
In an inner room, though, where Jhandar met with those who followed him most faithfully, bronze lion lamps illumined walls of alabaster bas-relief and floors mosaicked in a thousand colors.
Statues, vitraux, rosaces, arabesques, dentelures, chapiteaux, bas-reliefs, elle combine toutes ces imaginations selon le logarithme qui lui convient.
Bas-relief 8 Lions Frieze, Susa 9 Painted Head from Edessa 10 Cypriote Vase Decoration 11 Attic Grave Painting 12 Muse of Cortona 13 Odyssey Landscape 14 Amphore, Lower Italy 15 Ritual Scene, Palatine Wall painting 16 Portrait, Fayoum, Graf Collection 17 Chamber in Catacombs, with wall decorations 18 Catacomb Fresco, S.
Carter into a great domed space whose walls were carved in shocking bas-reliefs, and whose centre held a gaping circular pit surrounded by six malignly stained stone altars in a ring.
The colour screen showed a thirty-storied building in the shape of a parallelepiped, inlaid with orange ceramics and a fifty-metre bas-relief in snow-white marble of the first space rocket we had launched to the moon.
They were male and female and very short, with heads resembling closely the bas-reliefs on the ancient Aztec temples of Mexico.
One is the bas-relief signed by Antonianos of Aphrodisias and found some fifty years ago on the property of an agronomic institute, the Fundi Rustici, in the Committee Room of which it is now placed.
The bas-relief on which this is found is strongly Nahua in feeling and execution.
Ennis tore at the controls, granite-hard muscles standing out in bas-relief over his short, immensely thick body, skin gleaming scalelike in the slashing spray.
Ten feet apart crouched the mocking-faced beasts of diarite, brooding on cyclopean pedestals whose sides were chiselled in fearsome bas-reliefs.
The floor was a highly polished black, reflecting the great, glittering electroliers, each one a crystalline complexity, suspended from the shallow dome of the ceiling, which was decorated with ornate bas-reliefs in a floral pattern.