Art History Glossary

Art History Glossary

This glossary explains specialist art-history terms used across TheHistoryOfArt.org. It is designed for readers who want a quick definition while reading about artists, artworks, techniques, attribution, provenance and conservation. Readers looking specifically at built form can continue with the architectural elements guide.

The page will grow over time as new artist clusters surface useful terms. Broad everyday words such as artist, painting, artwork, museum and gallery are intentionally excluded unless a term has a specific technical meaning in context.

A

Abrasion

Abrasion is surface wear caused by rubbing, scraping or repeated contact. On a painting it may thin varnish or paint and expose lower layers; on other objects it can dull, scratch or remove the original surface.

Academy

An academy is an institution formed to teach, regulate, exhibit or promote the arts according to shared standards. European art academies often organized training, competitions and official exhibitions, though their authority and structure varied by place and period.

After (attribution)

After identifies a work derived from a known composition by another artist. It may be a painted copy, print or other reproduction and does not claim the original artist's hand; the maker may be named separately when known.

Albumen silver print

An albumen silver print is a photograph on paper coated with egg white and light-sensitive silver salts, usually printed in contact with a negative. The smooth albumen layer gives fine detail and a characteristic sheen but may yellow with age.

Alla prima

Alla prima is a painting method in which the artist works directly into wet paint, often completing a passage in one sitting rather than building it through many separate layers.

Altarpiece

An altarpiece is a work of art made for placement on, behind or near an altar. It may be a single image or a multi-panel structure with painted, carved or mixed elements.

Aquatint

Aquatint is an intaglio process that uses acid around a porous, resinous ground to create fields of tone rather than lines alone. Different biting times can produce graded areas that resemble ink wash or watercolor.

Armature

An armature is an internal framework that supports soft modelling material or helps stabilize a sculpture during construction or casting. Usually made from metal, wood or another rigid material, it functions as a structural skeleton rather than the finished surface.

Art conservation

Art conservation is the professional care of cultural objects through examination, documentation, preventive measures and, where justified, treatment. Its aim is to understand and stabilize material condition while respecting the work's history and minimizing unnecessary alteration.

Art restoration

Art restoration is treatment intended to recover or clarify an artwork's appearance, for example by reducing discoloured varnish or filling losses. It overlaps with conservation but emphasizes presentation, and responsible restoration is documented, limited and informed by evidence.

Artist's proof

An artist's proof is an impression reserved outside the numbered edition for the artist, traditionally marked A.P. or an equivalent notation. It is not necessarily a trial proof or uniquely altered image, and its status should be stated in the edition record.

Assemblage

Assemblage is a three-dimensional artwork constructed by combining found, made or adapted objects and materials. It is related to collage but occupies physical space, and unlike casting or carving its form comes principally through joining separate elements.

Asymmetry

Asymmetry is an arrangement without mirror-like correspondence across an axis or centre. An asymmetrical composition can still achieve balance by distributing differing forms, colours, spaces or visual weights in a controlled relationship.

Atelier

An atelier is an artist's studio or workshop, especially one where assistants, pupils or collaborators may have worked under a master artist.

Attribution

An attribution is the judgement that connects a work of art to a particular artist, workshop, circle or period. It may be firm, questioned or rejected as new evidence emerges.

Authenticity

Authenticity is the assessment of whether an artwork is what it is claimed to be, considering authorship, date, materials, history and alterations. It is established through converging evidence and is broader than visual resemblance or a single scientific test.

Autograph work

An autograph work is considered to have been made by the named artist's own hand. The label distinguishes direct authorship from work assigned to a studio, circle, follower or later imitator, although attribution may change with evidence.

B

Background

The background is the part of a depicted scene that appears furthest from the viewer or behind the principal forms. It can establish setting and depth, remain flat or abstract, or compete deliberately with foreground subjects.

Bas-relief

Bas-relief, or low relief, is sculpture in which forms project only slightly from a flat background. The figures remain attached to that field and are less deeply modelled than high relief, rather than being fully independent in the round.

Binder

A binder is the substance that holds pigment particles together and helps a paint layer adhere to its support. Oil, egg and gums can serve as binders; in painting records, medium may name the binder or the broader material and method.

Botanical illustration

Botanical illustration is image-making that records plants with attention to identifiable form and structure. It can overlap with art, science, collecting and still-life painting.

Bravura brushwork

Bravura brushwork is confident, conspicuous handling in which the artist's fluent strokes become part of the work's visual effect.

Burin

A burin is a pointed engraving tool used to cut lines directly into a metal printing plate. Museum records may mention burin work when a print combines engraving with etching or drypoint.

Burr

In drypoint, burr is the rough ridge of metal raised beside an incised line on the plate. It can hold extra ink and create a soft, velvety printed line.

C

Calotype

A calotype is an early photographic process that creates a paper negative from which multiple positive prints can be made. The paper fibres often soften image detail, distinguishing it from the unique, sharply detailed daguerreotype plate.

Canvas

Canvas is a woven fabric support used for painting. In object records the term normally describes the physical support, not simply the picture as a whole.

Cartoon (preparatory drawing)

A cartoon is a full-scale preparatory drawing used to transfer or guide a composition for a painting, fresco, tapestry, mosaic or other finished work. In this art-historical sense it does not mean a comic drawing or animated film.

Carving

Carving is a subtractive process in which material such as stone, wood or ivory is cut away to form an object or relief. It contrasts with modelling, which builds form in a pliable material, and casting, which uses a mould.

Casting

Casting forms an object by pouring or pressing liquid or workable material into a mould and allowing it to set. It can produce metal, plaster, resin or other objects and may permit multiple casts from a model, depending on the process.

Catalogue raisonne

A catalogue raisonne is a scholarly catalogue that tries to record all known works by an artist, or all works in a defined part of an artist's output, with evidence for attribution, date, provenance and literature.

Ceiling painting

A ceiling painting is an image designed for, painted on or installed across a ceiling or vault. Its composition often accounts for viewing from below and may use foreshortening or illusionistic architecture to extend the apparent space.

Cenacolo

Cenacolo is an Italian term connected with the Last Supper and with refectory settings where images of the Last Supper were placed in dining rooms. In art history it is especially useful when discussing Leonardo's Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie.

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is the use of strong light and dark contrasts to model form, create volume and guide attention. In Baroque painting it can also heighten drama and emotional focus.

Circle of

Circle of is an attribution suggesting a work was made by an artist closely associated with the named master and working in the same period. It implies proximity of style or contact, but not the master's own hand or necessarily the formal workshop.

Collage

Collage is an image or surface assembled by attaching materials such as paper, photographs, fabric or printed matter to a support. It is usually two-dimensional, while assemblage extends similar combining practices into three-dimensional objects.

Commission

A commission is an agreement or request for an artist to make a work for a patron, institution or specific setting. Its terms may determine subject, scale, materials, payment, delivery and the degree of artistic freedom.

Condition report

A condition report is a dated record of an artwork's physical state, including damage, deterioration, repairs and vulnerable areas. Museums and conservators use it before treatment, loans, transport or display so that later changes can be identified.

Connoisseurship

Connoisseurship is the practice of judging authorship, date, quality or relationships among artworks through close visual comparison and experienced knowledge. It may be combined with documentary research and technical analysis rather than treated as evidence on its own.

Contrapposto

Contrapposto is a standing pose in which weight rests mainly on one leg, causing corresponding shifts through the hips, torso and shoulders. The imbalance creates a more dynamic, natural relationship among the body's supporting and relaxed parts.

Copy

A copy is a work made after another work. In museum records it may describe a later reproduction, a studio version, a pupil's exercise or a work by a follower.

Court painter

A court painter is an artist employed by, or closely attached to, a royal or princely court. The role often involved portraits, ceremonies, decorative projects and official imagery.

Court portrait

A court portrait is a portrait shaped by the visual culture of a royal or princely court, often balancing likeness with rank, costume, ceremony and political presentation.

Craquelure

Craquelure is the network or pattern of cracks that develops in paint and sometimes varnish as materials age, dry or move. Its form can offer clues about technique and condition, but cracking alone does not prove a work's date or authenticity.

Cropping

Cropping is the selection or cutting off of part of an image or subject at the frame's edge. It can result from photography, printing or later alteration, or be an intentional compositional device that implies space beyond the picture.

Cross-hatching

Cross-hatching creates darker tones or modelled form by layering sets of hatched lines at different angles. It differs from simple hatching, which uses one main direction of parallel marks, though artists may combine both freely.

CT scan

A CT scan uses X-rays taken from multiple angles to build a three-dimensional view of an object. In art conservation it can help examine structure, layers or hidden damage.

Cyanotype

A cyanotype is a photographic printing process using iron salts that produce a deep blue image after exposure and washing. Objects or negatives can be placed against sensitized paper or fabric, leaving pale forms against the characteristic blue.

D

Daguerreotype

A daguerreotype is a direct-positive photograph formed on a silver-coated copper plate. Its highly detailed, mirror-like image is unique rather than printed from a negative and must be viewed at an angle or against a dark reflection.

Delft School

The Delft School describes artists associated with Delft in the seventeenth century, especially painters interested in light, space, perspective, domestic interiors and city views.

Dendrochronology

Dendrochronology is the dating of wood by studying annual growth rings. In art history it can help establish the earliest possible date for a panel painting.

Devotional image

A devotional image is a religious work intended to support prayer, contemplation or personal piety. It can be public or private, and is defined by its devotional function rather than by one particular subject, medium or format.

Diagonal composition

A diagonal composition organizes major forms or movement along slanting directions rather than mainly vertical and horizontal axes. Diagonals can suggest depth, instability, speed or drama, but their effect depends on the whole arrangement.

Diptych

A diptych is a work composed of two connected or corresponding panels. The panels may be hinged, fixed together or designed as a pair; unlike a triptych it has two parts, while a polyptych has several.

Donor portrait

A donor portrait shows the person or people who commissioned, paid for or donated a religious work, often placed within or beside the sacred scene.

Drypoint

Drypoint is an intaglio printmaking method in which the artist scratches directly into a plate with a sharp point. The raised burr around the line can print with a rich, soft edge.

E

Easel painting

An easel painting is a portable painting made on a separate support such as canvas or panel, rather than painted directly onto a building. The term concerns mobility and format; the work need not literally remain on an easel.

Edition

An edition is the declared group of impressions or objects produced from the same matrix, process or design, often in a limited number. It describes the production group, while an impression is one individual example and a state records a change to the matrix.

Empire style

Empire style is a French Neoclassical style associated with Napoleon's rule, using antique, imperial and ceremonial forms in art, architecture, furniture and design.

Engraving

Engraving is an intaglio printmaking technique in which lines are cut directly into a plate, usually with a burin, before the plate is inked and printed.

Etching

Etching is an intaglio printmaking process in which lines are bitten into a metal plate by acid. The artist normally draws through an acid-resistant ground before the plate is exposed to acid.

F

Facture

Facture is the visible manner in which an artwork has been made, especially the handling of paint and the traces of tools, layers or touch. It directs attention to material construction rather than subject matter alone.

Fijnschilder

A fijnschilder is a Dutch 'fine painter' known for highly finished surfaces, precise detail and carefully controlled illusionistic effects.

Flaking

Flaking is the lifting and separation of small areas of paint, ground or another surface layer from what lies beneath. Loose flakes may be at risk of loss and commonly require stabilization by a conservator.

Flower piece

A flower piece is a still-life painting or drawing focused on flowers, often combining botanical observation, arrangement, symbolism and painterly display.

Focal point

A focal point is an area designed to attract particular visual attention within a composition. Contrast, placement, scale, colour, detail, light or directional lines may create it, and a work can contain several competing focal points.

Follower of

Follower of is an attribution for a work made in the named artist's style by someone working during or after that artist's lifetime, generally outside the immediate workshop or circle. The label indicates influence without direct authorship.

Foreground

The foreground is the part of a depicted scene that appears closest to the viewer. It may contain large or sharply described forms and is distinguished from the middleground and background, though some compositions deliberately blur these spatial divisions.

Foreshortening

Foreshortening is the visual compression of a form seen at an angle, used to suggest depth, recession or projection into the viewer's space.

Forest floor still life

A forest floor still life is a still-life type showing plants, fungi, insects, reptiles or small animals close to the ground, often with scientific and symbolic associations.

Forgery

A forgery is an object made or altered with the intention of deceiving others about its maker, date, origin or authenticity. This fraudulent purpose distinguishes it from an acknowledged copy, replica, reconstruction or work made in another artist's manner.

G

Gelatin silver print

A gelatin silver print is a photograph made with light-sensitive silver salts suspended in gelatin, usually on paper. The process became a standard form of black-and-white photography and includes both developing-out and printing-out variants.

Genre painting

Genre painting shows scenes of everyday life rather than named historical, mythological or religious events. The scenes may still carry moral, comic or social meanings.

Gesso

Gesso is a smooth preparatory material traditionally made from chalk or gypsum mixed with glue and applied to a support before painting or gilding. Modern acrylic gesso has a different composition but serves a related priming function.

Glazing

Glazing is the application of thin, transparent or translucent paint layers over dried paint to alter colour, depth or tonal effect.

Gouache

Gouache is an opaque water-based paint. It differs from transparent watercolor because it can cover the surface more densely and produce flatter, stronger colour areas.

Grisaille

Grisaille is painting in shades of grey or another limited neutral range. It may be used as an underpainting, a finished monochrome work or an imitation of sculpture.

Ground

A ground is the prepared layer applied over a support to receive paint or drawing. It controls colour, texture and absorbency and lies beneath the image layers; gesso is one kind of ground rather than a synonym for every preparation.

Guild

A guild is an association that regulated a trade or profession, including artistic trades in many premodern cities. Membership could govern training, workshop practice, market access and professional status, but rules differed between locations and crafts.

H

Hatching

Hatching builds tone or models form with a series of closely spaced, usually parallel lines. The density, weight and direction of the marks affect value and texture; cross-hatching adds another set of lines crossing the first.

High relief

High relief is sculpture in which forms project strongly from the background, sometimes with substantial undercutting and nearly complete figures. It remains attached to a backing, unlike sculpture in the round, but extends further than bas-relief.

History painting

History painting is a genre focused on narrative subjects from religion, mythology, classical history, literature or national history. It was traditionally ranked highly in European academies.

Horizon line

The horizon line in perspective represents the viewer's eye level across the picture. Vanishing points for horizontal sets of parallel lines lie on it, even when the actual landscape horizon is hidden or the scene is an interior.

I

Icon

An icon is a sacred image, especially in Eastern Christian traditions, made for veneration and liturgical or private devotion. It names an image with a religious function, whereas iconography is the study and interpretation of subjects and symbols.

Iconography

Iconography is the study of subject matter and symbols in art, including how figures, objects, gestures or settings help identify a scene and its meaning.

Illuminated manuscript

An illuminated manuscript is a handwritten book decorated with painted or drawn ornament, initials, borders or pictures, often enhanced with gold or silver. Illumination supplements the written text and may range from small details to full-page images.

Impasto

Impasto is paint applied thickly enough for the surface to hold visible texture. Brushmarks, palette-knife marks or raised highlights may catch light differently from thinner passages.

Impression

In printmaking, an impression is a single printed example pulled from a plate, block or stone. Two impressions of the same print can differ because of paper, ink, wiping, wear or state.

Imprimatura

An imprimatura is a thin, usually translucent colour layer laid over a prepared ground before further painting. It reduces the glare or absorbency of a white ground and can provide a unifying middle tone that remains visible in places.

Infrared reflectography

Infrared reflectography is a technical imaging method that can reveal underdrawing, changes or hidden features when materials respond differently to infrared radiation.

Intaglio

Intaglio is a family of print processes in which ink held in recessed lines or textures is transferred under pressure to damp paper. Engraving, etching, drypoint, aquatint and mezzotint are intaglio methods; relief printing inks the raised surface instead.

K

Kermis

A kermis is a fair or village festival, often associated in Netherlandish art with dancing, drinking, communal celebration and moral commentary.

L

Landscape painting

Landscape painting treats natural or built surroundings as the main subject. It may describe real places, imagined settings or symbolic environments.

Last Judgment

The Last Judgment is a Christian subject showing the final judgment of souls, often with Christ, the saved, the damned, heaven and hell.

Lining and relining

Lining is the attachment of a second fabric to the back of a canvas painting to reinforce its support. Relining replaces or supplements an earlier lining; both are distinct from the stretcher or strainer that holds the canvas around its edges.

Linocut

A linocut is a relief print made by cutting a design into linoleum. Ink is rolled over the uncut surface and printed, while the removed areas remain blank; the soft material permits bold shapes and fluid cuts.

Lithography

Lithography is a planographic print process based on the repulsion of grease and water. An image drawn with greasy material on stone or a prepared plate accepts printing ink while damp non-image areas repel it.

Lost-wax casting

Lost-wax casting makes a metal object from a wax model that is enclosed in a mould and melted out, leaving a cavity for molten metal. Direct and indirect versions differ in how the model, mould and possible replicas are produced.

M

Manner of

Manner of is an attribution for a work executed in the style of a named artist, usually at a later date. It signals stylistic imitation without claiming that the maker belonged to the artist's workshop, circle or period.

Maquette

A maquette is a small three-dimensional preparatory model used to develop or present a proposed sculpture, monument, building or design. It allows scale, form and composition to be tested before work begins at full size.

Matrix

A matrix is the prepared surface that carries an image for printing, such as a woodblock, metal plate, lithographic stone or screen. It is the source from which impressions are printed, not the sheet of paper or the plate mark left on it.

Medium

Medium can mean the material or process used to make an artwork, such as oil paint, watercolor or sculpture. In painting it may also mean the liquid binder or an additive mixed with paint, so catalogue context determines the intended sense.

Metalpoint

Metalpoint is a drawing technique in which a metal stylus is drawn across a prepared surface, leaving a fine line that is difficult to erase.

Mezzotint

Mezzotint is an intaglio process in which a metal plate is first roughened to print a rich dark tone, then selectively smoothed to create lighter values. Its broad tonal range made it especially effective for reproducing paintings and portraits.

Microscopy

Microscopy is the examination of an artwork's surface or samples under magnification. Different light and electron microscopes can reveal toolmarks, fibres, pigments, deterioration and layered structure that cannot be resolved by unaided sight.

Middleground

The middleground is the zone of a depicted scene that appears between foreground and background. It often connects near and distant elements, helping organize depth, movement or narrative relationships across the composition.

Modelling

Modelling is an additive process of shaping pliable material such as clay or wax by building, pressing or removing small amounts. A model may remain finished in that material or serve as an intermediate stage for casting.

Modello

A modello is a preparatory model or presentation design, often made at reduced scale to develop an artwork or show a proposal to a patron. It may be a painting, drawing or three-dimensional object and is usually more resolved than a first sketch.

Monotype

A monotype is a print made by transferring a unique painted or inked image from a smooth surface to paper. Because most of the image is removed in one printing, later pulls are usually much fainter and not members of a conventional edition.

Moral satire

Moral satire uses humour, exaggeration or unsettling imagery to criticise human behaviour, social habits or spiritual failings.

Mural

A mural is a large work made for a wall or ceiling. It may be painted directly onto the surface or made on another support and installed there.

N

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is an artistic movement inspired by ancient Greek and Roman art, often associated with clarity, order, restraint and classical subject matter.

O

Oak panel

An oak panel is a wooden painting support made from oak. It is especially common in Northern European paintings and may be studied through wood grain or dendrochronology.

Orientalism

Orientalism describes European and American images, objects and ideas shaped by fascination with North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, often filtered through colonial assumptions and fantasy.

Overpaint

Overpaint is paint applied over an existing paint layer after the original work was completed, often during repair or later alteration. Examination may distinguish it from original revisions, retouching confined to losses, or the artist's own changes.

P

Paint cross-section

A paint cross-section is a tiny sample embedded in resin, cut and polished perpendicular to its layers, then examined under magnification. It can reveal the sequence, thickness, condition and sometimes composition of grounds, paint, coatings and later additions.

Painterly

Painterly describes an approach that emphasizes the visible movement, texture and flexibility of paint rather than concealing the artist's handling beneath a smooth finish. It can apply to loose brushwork, blended passages or assertive surface effects.

Palette knife

A palette knife is a flexible, blunt blade used to mix paint on a palette and, when applied to the artwork, to spread, scrape or shape paint. Knife handling can create broad planes, sharp ridges and textured impasto.

Panel

A panel is a rigid painting support, usually wood. Museum records may identify the panel material because it affects dating, conservation and technique.

Panel painting

A panel painting is a painting made on a rigid panel support rather than on canvas, paper or another flexible surface.

Paris Salon

The Paris Salon was the major official exhibition in Paris, especially important in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for reputation, patronage and public criticism.

Pastel

Pastel is a drawing medium made from powdered pigment bound into sticks. It can create soft, powdery colour as well as sharp linear marks.

Patina

Patina is a surface layer or appearance produced by age, environment or deliberate chemical treatment, especially on metal sculpture. It can protect, colour or visually unify the surface and should not automatically be treated as dirt or damage.

Patron

A patron is a person, group or institution that supports the making of art, often by commissioning, funding or purchasing work. A patron may shape subject and function, while patronage describes the broader relationship or system of support.

Patronage

Patronage is the support given to artists by individuals, courts, churches, institutions or collectors, often through commissions, purchases or protection.

Pendant paintings

Pendant paintings are two works conceived or arranged as companions, usually with matching dimensions, formats or subjects. They may face one another or balance as a pair, but need not be physically joined like the panels of a diptych.

Pentimento

A pentimento is a visible or technically detected change made by the artist during the making of a work. It may reveal an altered pose, object, contour or compositional idea.

Perspective box

A perspective box is a device or constructed viewing space designed so an image appears convincing from a particular viewpoint, often using optical or perspectival effects.

Photogravure

Photogravure is a printmaking and reproduction process in which a photographic image is transferred to a plate and printed in ink.

Photomontage

Photomontage combines two or more photographic images or fragments into a new constructed image, physically or digitally. Unlike collage, which can mix any materials, photomontage specifically depends on photographic sources even when drawing or text is added.

Picture plane

The picture plane is the imaginary flat surface corresponding to the physical face of a painting, drawing or photograph. Artists can reinforce its flatness or create the illusion that forms recede behind or project in front of it.

Pigment

A pigment is a coloured material, usually made of finely divided particles, that provides colour when mixed with a binder. Pigment is the colour-bearing substance, while the binder holds particles together and helps attach the paint to its ground.

Pigment analysis

Pigment analysis uses microscopy, spectroscopy, elemental methods and other tests to characterize colour-bearing materials in an artwork. Results can inform technique, condition, dating or attribution, but usually require interpretation alongside layer structure, history and other evidence.

Plate mark

A plate mark is the indentation pressed into paper by the edges of an intaglio plate during printing. It can help identify the printing process or plate size, but it is distinct from plate tone, which comes from surface ink.

Plate tone

Plate tone is the tone created when ink is deliberately or accidentally left on the surface of an intaglio plate before printing, rather than only inside the incised lines.

Polyptych

A polyptych is a multi-panel work, commonly an altarpiece with more than three painted or carved sections. Its panels may form a fixed structure or include movable wings, distinguishing it from two-part diptychs and three-part triptychs.

Portraiture

Portraiture is the making of images that represent a person or group. A portrait may pursue likeness, status, character, role, memory or public identity.

Predella

A predella is the lower horizontal section of an altarpiece, often divided into small narrative scenes related to the principal image above. It is part of the larger altar ensemble rather than a general name for the whole retable.

Proof

A proof is an impression made for checking, recording or special designation rather than simply as a standard numbered impression. Trial proofs can show work in progress; artist's proofs are reserved from the edition and do not necessarily document an earlier state.

Provenance

Provenance is the ownership history of a work of art, from its creation through later collections, sales, transfers or museum acquisition.

R

Raman spectroscopy

Raman spectroscopy identifies materials by measuring changes in laser light scattered by their molecular structure. In conservation it can help distinguish pigments and other compounds, sometimes without sampling, although fluorescence, mixtures and surface condition can limit results.

Registration

Registration is the alignment of successive colours, plates, blocks, screens or sheets in a print or other layered image. Accurate registration makes the components meet as intended; deliberate misregistration can also be used as a visible artistic effect.

Relief print

A relief print is made from the raised surface of a block or matrix after lower areas have been cut or otherwise removed. Woodcut and linocut are common examples, contrasting with intaglio processes that print from recessed marks.

Replica

A replica is a repeated version of an existing work, often made by the original artist or under close studio authority. Usage varies between catalogues, so authorship should be stated; unlike a forgery, a replica is not defined by fraudulent intent.

Repoussoir

Repoussoir is a compositional device in which a prominent form at the edge of the foreground frames the view and pushes attention into deeper space. Trees, architecture or dark figures often serve this role; the term does not simply mean any foreground object.

Retable

A retable is a structure or artwork placed behind or above an altar. It may include painted panels, carved sculpture, gilding or architectural framing.

S

Sarga

Sarga is a Spanish term often used for paintings made on cloth with glue-size or related media rather than ordinary oil on canvas.

Scale

Scale is the size of an element in relation to the work, the viewer or other represented forms. Artists can use naturalistic, monumental, miniature or deliberately inconsistent scale to shape hierarchy, intimacy, space and meaning.

School of

School of is an attribution indicating that a work was made by an artist associated with the named master's regional or stylistic tradition, often during or soon after that master's lifetime. It does not claim direct authorship or necessarily personal contact.

Screenprint

A screenprint is made by pressing ink through open areas of a mesh screen while a stencil blocks the rest. Separate screens or stencils may register different colours, and the method is also called screen printing or serigraphy.

Sculpture in the round

Sculpture in the round is a fully three-dimensional work intended to be viewed from multiple sides. Unlike relief sculpture, its principal forms are not attached across their backs to a continuous flat background.

Scumbling

Scumbling is the application of opaque or semi-opaque paint dragged thinly over another layer so that the colour beneath partly shows through.

Sfumato

Sfumato is a painting technique associated especially with Leonardo da Vinci, using very soft transitions between tones so that forms appear through gradual modelling rather than hard outlines.

Sgraffito

Sgraffito is a technique in which an upper layer is scratched or scraped away to reveal a differently coloured layer beneath. It appears in painting, ceramics, plaster and architectural decoration, with the exposed underlayer forming the design.

Society portrait

A society portrait is a portrait of a socially prominent sitter, often shaped by fashion, status, public image and the expectations of elite display.

Staffage

Staffage consists of small human or animal figures included mainly to enliven a landscape, architectural view or scene, indicate scale or support its mood. The figures are usually secondary to the principal setting rather than the main narrative subject.

State

In printmaking, a state is a version of a print that reflects changes made to the plate or block. Later states can add, remove or alter details.

Still life

Still life is an art genre focused on arranged objects such as flowers, food, vessels, books or instruments. The objects may carry visual, symbolic or scientific meaning.

Strainer

A strainer is a rigid frame with fixed corners over which canvas is stretched. Unlike an expandable stretcher, it cannot normally be keyed out to adjust tension, although both structures support the canvas from behind.

Stretcher

A stretcher is an adjustable wooden frame over which a canvas is stretched. Its jointed corners can be expanded with keys or other mechanisms to alter tension, distinguishing it from a fixed-corner strainer.

Studio replica

A studio replica is a repeated version of a composition made in or through an artist's studio, often to satisfy demand for an official or successful image.

Support

The support is the physical material that carries the image, such as canvas, panel, paper, copper or another surface prepared for painting, drawing or printing.

Symmetry

Symmetry is an arrangement in which forms correspond across an axis, centre or repeated structure. It can create order and stability, but does not automatically make a composition balanced, since colour, emphasis and visual weight also matter.

T

Tondo

A tondo is a circular work of art, especially a painting or relief. The term describes the round format rather than the subject, and it may apply to an independent object or a circular element within a larger design.

Triptych

A triptych is a work made of three panels, usually with a central panel and two wings. Many altarpieces and devotional works use this format.

Trompe l'oeil

Trompe l'oeil is illusionistic art that tries to deceive the eye by making painted or drawn objects appear physically present.

Tronie

A tronie is a Dutch and Flemish type of character head or figure study, often showing an expressive face, costume, lighting effect or type rather than a named portrait sitter.

U

Ultraviolet fluorescence

Ultraviolet fluorescence examination records visible light emitted by some materials under ultraviolet radiation. Differences can help map varnish, retouching, coatings or repairs, but interpretation depends on materials, ageing and comparison with other evidence.

Underdrawing

Underdrawing is drawing made beneath the paint layers to plan figures, architecture, composition or details before painting begins.

Underpainting

Underpainting is an early paint layer used to establish broad forms, tonal values or colour relationships before later, more finished layers are applied.

V

Vanishing point

A vanishing point is the point in linear perspective toward which represented parallel lines appear to converge as they recede. A composition may use one, several or no strict vanishing points depending on its spatial system.

Vanitas

Vanitas is a still-life tradition that uses objects such as skulls, fading flowers, clocks or extinguished candles to reflect on mortality and worldly transience.

Varnish

Varnish is a transparent or translucent coating applied over a finished surface to protect it and alter gloss, saturation or visual unity. Natural or synthetic varnishes can discolor, become cloudy or be removed and replaced during conservation.

Verdaccio

Verdaccio is a greenish underpainting used especially in Italian painting to model flesh or establish tonal structure beneath later colour layers.

Version

A version is one of two or more works sharing substantially the same subject or composition but differing in details, size, handling or date. The term is neutral about authorship unless a catalogue specifies whether the artist or studio made it.

W

War artist

A war artist records conflict, military life or the effects of war, either through official commission or independent observation.

Wash

A wash is a thin, fluid application of diluted ink, watercolor or paint that creates a broad transparent or semi-transparent tone. Artists use washes to establish shadows, atmosphere or colour fields, often alongside linear drawing.

Watercolor

Watercolor is a water-based painting medium in which pigments are usually applied in transparent washes, allowing the paper or earlier layers to affect the final appearance.

Wood engraving

Wood engraving is a relief printmaking technique cut into the end grain of a wood block, capable of fine detail and widely used for nineteenth-century illustration.

Woodcut

A woodcut is a relief print made from a wooden block whose non-printing areas are cut away. Ink remains on the raised surface and transfers to paper, so the process differs from intaglio methods that print ink held below a plate's surface.

Workshop

A workshop is the artist's studio environment, including assistants, pupils and collaborators. Workshop attribution can describe works made within that setting rather than solely by the named master.

X

X-radiography

X-radiography is an imaging method that records how X-rays pass through an artwork, helping conservators study structure, hidden changes and material differences.

X-ray

An X-ray is electromagnetic radiation used in conservation imaging to examine what may lie beneath or within the visible surface of an artwork.

X-ray fluorescence (XRF)

X-ray fluorescence, or XRF, identifies elements by measuring characteristic secondary X-rays emitted when a material is excited. It can often examine an object without sampling, but elemental results may suggest rather than uniquely identify a pigment. It is not X-radiography.

References

Definitions are written for TheHistoryOfArt.org readers and checked against museum and scholarly glossary sources where specialist terminology is involved.

• National Gallery, London, Glossary
• National Gallery of Art, Glossary of Conservation Terminology
• Getty, Artists' Things: Burin
• Getty Research Institute, Art & Architecture Thesaurus
• Tate, Art Terms
• Museum of Modern Art, Art Terms
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, essays and object records for printmaking and Old Master painting terms
• Victoria and Albert Museum, A to Z of Photographic Processes