Heads and Faces in Relief Across Many Centuries

Ancient Greece
Box-mirror with profile of a woman
ca. 400-375 BC
bronze relief
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ancient Greece
Roundel with head of an old satyr
ca. 325-300 BC
bronze relief
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Roman Empire
Roundel (bridle ornament) with head of Herakles
1st-2nd century AD
ivory relief
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Interview:  Performance Artist in Helsinki

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How most for to explain?
Arranging to appear against myself
always in separation
entailing backdrop by reintegration
as of the yellow and the lemon,
the paper and the tree,
like a prolongation of the past
from caves of their making.
Not mine!
But their thinking so continues it.
For is why I call out, one and one
and one, shards of a new dark.
And if the hour is correct with me,
if I fail to drop a step,
they cannot abscond with their viewing
or unhook their hearts
in adjacency to such silence
as now begins: like the disassembled drum.
But exactly not, a more far waiting
like ends of dreams of trains
too late not yet begun.

– J. Allyn Rosser, from Mimi's Trapeze (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014)

Roman Empire
Mask of Dionysus
ca. AD 40-70
marble relief fragment
Princeton University Art Museum

Pisanello
Portrait-medal of Don Inigo d'Avalos
ca. 1449-50
bronze relief
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous-French sculptor
Miniature profile portrait of a woman
ca. 1575-1600
fruitwood relief
Philadelphia Museum of Art

follower of Jan van Logteren
Oval medallion with head of a faun
ca. 1720-30
marble relief
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

follower of Jan van Logteren
Oval medallion with head of Bacchus
ca. 1720-30
marble relief
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Giovanni Antonio Santarelli
Head of a Greek philosopher
before 1826
sardonyx cameo set in gold ring
Harvard Art Museums

James Sherwood Westmacott
The artist's daughter
ca. 1872
marble relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

César Isidore Henry Cros
Mask
ca. 1890-95
pâte de verre
Victoria & Albert Museum

Franz von Stuck
Beethoven
ca. 1902
 painted stucco relief
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Vincenzo Gemito
Medusa
1911
partially gilt silver relief
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Profile portrait of Josephine Shaw Lowell
modeled ca. 1889-93, carved ca. 1921-25
marble relief
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

European Terracotta Reliefs

Archaic Greece
Pinax with Sphinx and Griffin (fragment)
ca. 600-570 BC
terracotta relief
Harvard Art Museums

Greek culture in South Italy
Sphinx seated on Aeolic Capital
ca. 480-460 BC
terracotta relief
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Greek culture in South Italy
Herakles Reclining
ca. 200-100 BC
terracotta relief
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"The use of clay amongst the Greeks was varied and extensive.  Among the manifold purposes to which terracotta was put may be mentioned parts of public and private buildings, such as bricks, roof tiles, drains and flue tiles, and architectural ornaments; tombs and coffins; statues and statuettes, for votive or sepulchral purposes or for the decoration of houses; imitations of metal vases and jewelry; and such everyday objects as spindle whorls, theatre tickets, lamps, braziers and domestic utensils.  It also supplied the potter with moulds and the sculptor with models for works of art, especially in bronze."

– Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition, 1911) 

Donatello
Madonna and Child
ca. 1455-60
gilded terracotta relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

attributed to Domenico di Paris
Madonna and Child
ca. 1470
painted terracotta relief
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

attributed to Luca della Robbia
Madonna and Child with Lilies
ca. 1460-70
glazed terracotta relief
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

" . . . the field of replicated relief sculpture was transformed by Luca della Robbia's development of shiny opacified tin-based enamel glazes that could be fired onto clay sculpture to create surfaces decorated with light-reflecting, long lasting, and intense colours unlike anything produced by ordinary paints.  The hard glazes were durable and even helped to preserve the underlying terracotta, whereas paint tended to flake off over time, exposing the vulnerable moulded forms to damage.  Luca's invention combined the best of painting and sculpture: he usually glazed his Madonna and Child in white to suggest that they were made of the much more expensive and heavy material of marble.  The accents of colour around their eyes enlivened their gazes even as their pale bodies became ethereal, when viewed in flickering candlelight.  The figures were set off by iconographic accessories, surrounding backgrounds and frames in a variety of rich, luminous colours.  For all these reasons, Luca's glazed terracotta sculptures became the preferred choice of buyers who could afford them.  By mid-century the former marble sculptor devoted himself and his workshop almost exclusively to their production, a specialisation that his nephew Andrea and great-nephew Giovanni continued well into the sixteenth century."  

– Donal Cooper, from Depth of Field: Relief Sculpture in Renaissance Italy (Peter Lang, 2007)

Andrea della Robbia
Prudence
ca. 1475
glazed terracotta relief
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian sculptor
Copy of figures from a 15th-century Frieze in Palazzo Fodri, Cremona
(Mother and Child with Youths carrying Vessels)
19th century
terracotta relief
National Gallery of Canada

Anonymous Italian sculptor
Copy of figures from a 15th-century Frieze in Palazzo Fodri, Cremona
(Nude Warriors with Horses)
19th century
terracotta relief
National Gallery of Canada

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Sketch for Allegorical Figure
1630-31
terracotta relief
Harvard Art Museums

"Modeling in clay is to the sculptor what drawing on paper is to the painter.  For as the first pressing of the juice of the grape forms the finest wine, so in the soft clay and on paper the genius of the artist is seen in the utmost purity and truth; while, on the contrary, talent is concealed beneath the industry and the polish required in a completed statue or a finished painting.  . . .  This attention to sculpture in clay is confirmed by contemporary experience, and one can state as a general rule that nothing bad of this kind is ever found, an assertion that cannot be made of reliefs in marble."

– J.J. Winckelmann, from History of Ancient Art (1763)

Alessandro Algardi
Pope Liberius baptizing the Neophytes
1647-49
terracotta relief (modello for a marble panel)
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Melchiorre Cafà
Partial Model for the Martyrdom of St Eustace
(Church of Sant' Agnese in Piazza Navona, Rome)
ca. 1660
terracotta relief
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

attributed to Melchiorre Cafà
David dancing before the Ark
ca. 1660-65
terracotta relief (modello for a bronze plaque)
Victoria & Albert Museum

John Flaxman
Self-portrait
1778
terracotta relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Sixteenth-Century European Relief Sculptures in Stone

Anonymous Italian sculptor
Arms of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia)
ca. 1500
marble relief
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Antonio Lombardo
Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos
ca. 1510-15
marble relief, with colored panels of breccia marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

"The relief represents Philoctetes, son of Poeas, King of the Malians.  According to the version of the myth recorded by Servius, which is that illustrated in the relief, Philoctetes, having accidentally injured himself on the journey to Troy with one of the arrows of Hercules, was abandoned by his companions on Lemnos because of the stench of his wound.  The bow and arrows of Hercules are shown in the right background of the relief: they were presented to Philoctetes or his father in return for lighting the funeral pyre of Hercules on Mount Oeta, and were later instrumental in effecting the fall of Troy.  Philoctetes, a bearded male nude carved almost in the round, is seated on a tree trunk which rises from the platform.  He faces to the left with his right leg extended across the relief and his right foot raised on the projecting step.  With his left hand he clasps the tree trunk, and with his right he fans the inflamed wound in his right calf with a bird's wing.  The popularity of this relief is reflected in the survival of three modified variants.  These are in the Hermitage, the Palazzo Ducale at Mantua and a private collection in London.  The basic composition of the relief is related to an antique cameo of the same subject, signed by the Hellenistic artist Boethos, while the figure itself is derived from the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican."  

Antonio Lombardo
Venus Anadyomene
ca. 1510-15
marble relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

"This relief formed part of a cycle of carvings of mythological figures by Lombardo.  The inscription on the base is the last pentameter of a passage in Ovid in which the poet describes a gem incised with the image of Venus rising from the sea – Naked Venus wrings spray from her hair.  It was a signal to the learned viewer to recall the full passage.  Pope-Hennessy claims that the figure derives directly from that of Giorgione's paintings, stating that "nowhere in marble is the search for a three dimensional equivalent to Giorgione's voluptuous figures as clearly to be read as it is here."  Peta Motture describes the composition as apparently based on descriptions of a lost work by the Greek painter Apelles, which also inspired Botticelli's Birth of Venus."  

circle of Antonio Lombardo
Eurydice
ca. 1515-24
marble relief
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"This relief evokes the love between the classical scholar Gaspare Fantuzzi (ca. 1465/70-1536) and his wife Dorotea Castelli, who were both members of patrician families in Bologna and were married in 1502.  The inscription on the reverse of the first version of the Eurydice, in which the faithful wife of Orestes is bitten by a snake, reads – Gaspare Fantuzzi of Bologna dedicates this to the most sweet alliance of marriage and conjugal love.  This work must have been commissioned by Fantuzzi himself to celebrate his marriage." 

imitator of Donatello
Dead Christ tended by Angels
ca. 1520-40
marble relief (rilievo schiacciato)
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Italian sculptor
Tondo with Sacrifice to Apollo
ca. 1525-75
marble relief
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Loy Hering
The Fall
ca. 1530-35
Solnhofen limestone relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

"This is a relief in Solnhofen limestone made by Loy Hering in about 1530-35 in Eichstätt in the Franconian area of South Germany.  It depicts the Fall of Man.  Loy Hering (ca. 1485-1554) worked in Eichstätt for nearly forty years.  In Eichstätt, as in Augsburg, Nuremberg, and numerous other South German cities, there existed a great demand for small-scale sculptures in materials such as Solnhofen stone.  The composition showing Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden is adapted from a woodcut by Hans Baldung, dated 1511.  The relief may have formed part of a cabinet of curiosities."

Benedetto Cervi
Warrior in Procession toward a Contest
ca. 1531-32
marble relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

"This is one of three reliefs which might have formed part of a monument intended for King Francis I of France.  The original commission went to Agostino Busti (called Bambala), who was an established master, but he sub-contracted the work to Benedetto Cervi, a former assistant.  Cervi was known for his skill in carving reliefs in the classical manner, with some parts entirely in the round."

Benedetto Cervi
Two Warriors shooting at the Sun
ca. 1531-32
marble relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Benedetto Cervi
Youth leading a rearing Horse
ca. 1531-32
marble relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Giovanni Maria Mosca
Lucretia
ca. 1550
marble relief with lapis lazuli panel
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Anonymous Italian sculptor
Battle Scene
ca. 1550
marble relief
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Netherlandish sculptor
Entombment
ca. 1550-1600
alabaster relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous German or Netherlandish sculptor
Crucifixion
ca. 1580
alabaster relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

– quoted texts based on curator's notes from the respective museums

Vasari Compares Reliefs by della Robbia and Donatello

Luca della Robbia
Singing Gallery (detail of frieze)
ca. 1431-38
marble relief
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

Luca della Robbia
Singing Gallery (detail of frieze)
ca. 1431-38
marble relief
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

Luca della Robbia
Singing Gallery
ca. 1431-38
marble
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

"The locus classicus for this observation in the late Italian Renaissance is to be found in Vasari's life of Luca della Robbia.  Vasari there contrasts the two Singing Galleries for the Florentine cathedral, done respectively by Luca [above] and by Donatello [below].  . . .  Luca's work, we hear, was very neatly finished, but Donatello had proceeded with more judgment.  'He left it rough and unfinished,' wrote Vasari, 'so that from a distance it looked much better than Luca's; though Luca's is made with good design and diligence, its polish and refinement cause the eye from a distance to lose it and not to make it out as well as that by Donatello, which is hardly more than roughed out.  Artists should pay much attention to this, for experience shows that all things which are far removed, be they paintings, sculptures, or whatever, have more beauty and greater force when they are a beautiful sketch [una bella bozza] than when they are finished.  And quite apart from the distance which has this effect, it also frequently appears in sketches which arise all of a sudden in the frenzy of art that expresses the idea in a few strokes, while a laboured effect and too much industry sometimes deprive of force and skill those who cannot ever leave their hand from the work they are doing'."

"Vasari's account is so interesting because it shows his awareness of the link between the imagination of the artist and that of the public.  Only works that are created in a state of heightened imagination, he said in effect, will appeal to the imagination.  In the context of Renaissance theories and prejudices, insistence on inspiration and imagination goes hand in hand with emphasis on art as the high intellectual activity and the rejection of mere menial skill.  Careful finish betrays the artisan who has to observe the standards of the guild.  The true artist, like the true gentleman, will work with ease.  This is Castiglione's famous doctrine of sprezzatura, the nonchalance which marks the perfect courtier and the perfect artist."

– E.H. Gombrich, from Art and Illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation (London: Phaidon Press, 1960 – an expanded version of the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts given at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 1956)

Donatello
Singing Gallery (detail of frieze)
ca. 1433-40
marble relief
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

Donatello
Singing Gallery (detail of frieze)
ca. 1433-40
marble relief
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

Donatello
Singing Gallery (detail of frieze)
ca. 1433-40
marble
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

Donatello
Singing Gallery
ca. 1433-40
marble
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

European Relief Sculptures in Ivory

Anonymous Greek Sculptor in South Italy
Striding Satyr
2nd century BC
ivory relief appliqué
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Anonymous Roman Sculptor
Artemis and Apollo
4th century AD
ivory relief panel
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Anonymous Italian Sculptor
St Sebastian
ca. 1470-85
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous German Sculptor after Barthel Beham
Battle of Nude Men over Abduction of a Woman
ca. 1550-75
ivory relief plaque
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Gérard van Opstal
Bacchanal of Putti
ca. 1640-68
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

"Ivory is the dense, hard, creamy white substance that forms the tusks of mammals, though the term is also used for other similar materials.  For centuries it has been highly valued by craftsmen and patrons alike for use in religious and secular objects.  The main source of ivory is elephant tusks from Africa and India.  The tusks of Atlantic walrus and whalebone from the Finner whale have also been popular in northern Europe since the 10th century.  . . .  Elephant and walrus ivory and whalebone are prepared for carving by removing the outer layer known as the 'husk' or 'cementum'.  The tusk is then sawn into the appropriate shape for a figure or relief.  The carver uses small knives, chisels, gouges and files, very similar to those used for wood carving.  After polishing, ivory can be stained or partially painted or gilded."

Leonhard Kern
Scene in a Women's Bath-house
ca. 1650
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Francis van Bossuit
David with the Head of Goliath
ca. 1675-92
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

"Both the smooth carving of David's body, resembling wax, and the contrasting rough dappling of the background, are typical of the artist.  Bossuit was one of the most accomplished ivory carvers of the late 17th century and the subtlety of this relief bears out his admirers' claims that he could carve ivory 'as if it was wax'.  It was almost certainly carved in Amsterdam, where Bossuit moved late in his career, having spent many years in Italy."

Jakob Auer
Judgment of Paris
ca. 1675-80
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Balthasar Griessmann
Sacrifice of Isaac
1679
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Dutch Sculptor
David with the Head of Goliath
ca. 1690-1700
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Jacob Dobbermann
Homage to Venus
ca. 1730-40
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Peter Hencke
Abduction of the Sabine Women
1743
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

"Dramatic and virtuoso compositions were often carved in ivory during the baroque period.  Hencke's figures seem to have been inspired by Rubens's work, although no specific source has been identified.  . . .  The relief is made up of four pieces of ivory, with two extra added for the trees and archway, respectively."

Anonymous German Sculptor
Childhood of Jupiter
ca. 1850-1900
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Italian Sculptor
Death as a Skeleton
ca. 1850-70
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

– quoted texts based on curator's notes from the Victoria & Albert Museum