Wednesday, 9 December 2015
Bastide - Oxford Definition
A medieval fortified town built for the colonization or pacification of an area, particularly associated with the south of France; also in modern usage in Provence to describe a small country house.
Bas-Relief (or Basso-Rilievo) - Oxford Definition
‘Low relief’, that is relief sculpture in which the figures never project more than half their true depth from the background.
Basketry - Oxford Definition
The process of making containers out of a mesh of vegetable fibres in a technique similar to weaving. It is one of the oldest crafts and the earliest examples date from c.5000 BC in Iraq. Basketry probably preceded both textile weaving and pottery.
Basilica - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek basilik, ‘royal’] a church with aisles and a nave higher than the aisles. The nave was usually lit by the windows of a clerestory. Such churches first came into being in the Early Christian era and were modelled on Roman basilicas (large meeting places or halls of justice). With its longtitudinal axis, usually terminating with an apse at one end of the nave, the basilica plan was later adapted for Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals.
Base - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek basis, ‘that on which one stands’] the lower portion of any structure or architectural feature. Also the lower part of an heraldic shield. See CHIEF.
Basanite - Oxford Definition
A type of greywacke (conglomerate rock formed as a by-product of the decomposition of basaltic rock). It was highly prized and first used for sculpture by the ancient Egyptians who, until the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great c.332 BC, reserved it for statues of the gods. Varying in colour from very dark green to dark rusty brown, it was known to the Egyptians as the ‘stone of Bekhan’ and extracted, with considerable difficulty, from Mount Uadi Hammmt. In the 18th century Josiah Wedgwood invented and sold an imitation of basanite known as black basalt.
Basalt - Oxford Definition
A dark, hard (and therefore durable) igneous rock used for sculpture, for example in ancient Egypt and in parts of the southern Indian subcontinent. It is sometimes confused with the softer basanite.
Barrel Vault (or Tunnel Vault) - Oxford Definition
The simplest form of vault, consisting of a continuous vault of semi-circular or pointed section, unbroken in its length by cross vaults. Developed by the Romans, barrel vaults were used in Christian churches until the invention of rib-vaulting around 1100.
Baroque Revival - Oxford Definition
An architectural style adopted for many major public and institutional buildings in Great Britain and the British Empire between 1885 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Known at the time as the English Renaissance style, it adopted many of its motifs such as domes and cupolas from what is now regarded as the English Baroque style of Wren, Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, and Gibbs. One of many notable examples of the Baroque Revival style is the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Courts), London, of 1900–6 with its central dome modelled after Wren's Royal Hospital at Greenwich.
Baroque - Oxford Definition
A term now generally used to describe art in Europe between c.1600 and c.1750. It is broadly accepted today that ‘Baroque’ implies dynamism and movement (particularly in architecture and sculpture), and a theatricality dependent on a mastery of space and geometry. The illusionism of Baroque painting is, nevertheless, founded on the ability to depict reality. All Baroque art, however outwardly dissimilar it may appear, is indebted to the technical achievements of the Renaissance. The term itself originated in the mid-18th century when used by Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) in a derogatory sense, to describe the allegedly excessive art of the preceding era. The word ‘Baroque’ was claimed to derive from the Portuguese barroco meaning a ‘pearl or tooth of unequal size’. It therefore implied imbalance and ugliness, as opposed to the ideal beauty and perfection sought by Winckelmann through the imitation of ancient, more particularly Greek, art. It was not until the later 19th century that ‘Baroque’, through the writings of a series of distinguished German art historians, lost its pejorative connotations and was considered as an art that was vital and distinct from that of the hallowed Renaissance. The Baroque was originally associated with post-Counter-Reformation Italy and with the concept of the unity of the arts, best exemplified in the work of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), architect, sculptor, theatre set designer, and painter and the presiding artistic genius of 17th-century Rome. Essentially a Catholic art, the Baroque spread from Italy to Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and later to southern Germany, numbering among its many masters such diverse figures as Borromini, Pietro da Cortona, and Rubens.
Barium Yellow (or Lemon Yellow)
A pale green-yellow pigment made by mixing solutions of neutral potassium chromate and barium chloride.
Barbizon School - Oxford Definition
A group of French landscape painters who worked in the forest of Fontainebleau south-east of Paris c.1830–70 and were based in the village of Barbizon on the western edge of the forest. The most important members were Jean-François Millet, Théodore Rousseau, Charles Jacque, Jules Dupré, Narcisse Diaz, and Constant Troyon; also associated with them were Camille Corot and Charles Daubigny. Much of their forest imagery of ancient oaks and desolate heaths, sometimes populated by the local peasants and their livestock, was inspired by Dutch 17th-century art. Their choice of imagery represented a reaction to the rapid urban growth of Paris and answered an increasing demand from bourgeois patrons for paintings of rural landscape, often imbued with a melancholy Romanticism. The term ‘Barbizon School’ was not actually coined until 1890 when the Scottish dealer David Croal Thomson published his book The Barbizon School of Painters. By that time the so-called Barbizon artists were widely collected in Britain (especially Scotland), Europe, and the United States. Despite claims made for Barbizon as a forerunner of Impressionism, its aims, its rural setting, and the techniques it employed were really very different to those of that later Paris-based movement.
Barbican - Oxford Definition
An outwork, such as a watchtower, defending the entrance to a castle, fortress, or town.
Baptistery - Oxford Definition
Part of a church used for the rites of baptism. Sometimes found in an apse of the main building, more often a separate structure, usually circular or polygonal. Early baptisteries had large pools for total immersion, but it became more normal for symbolic baptism to be from a font.
Banquette - Oxford Definition
A French term used to describe a small bench without a back, usually upholstered.
Banding - Oxford Definition
An ornamental border used on furniture, made of contrasting woods, such as satinwood with mahogany.
Banded Column - Oxford Definition
A column whose shaft is broken up by the addition of bands or blocks of stonework. Such columns are a common feature of Mannerist and Baroque architecture.
Bamboo Furniture - Oxford Definition
Furniture made from the wood of the bamboo plant, mainly of the simple, household type, in use in Europe from the 19th century. The term is also used for furniture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries carved and painted to look like bamboo.
Bamboccianti - Oxford Definition
A group of painters in 17th-century Rome who worked in the style of Pieter van Laer (il Bamboccio or ‘clumsy little one’) from whom the name derives. They specialized in bambocciate (the singular is bambocciata or ‘childishness’), small genre scenes of everyday Italian life. Most of the artists in the group were of north European origin, though there were also some Italians such as Michelangelo Cerquozzi. Van Laer returned to his native Haarlem in 1639. See SCHILDERSBENT.
Balustrade - Oxford Definitino
The ensemble of rail or coping supported by balusters forming a railing.
Baluster - Oxford Definition
A short pillar or post supporting a rail or coping and forming part of a balustrade. Alternatively, a ceramic or glass vase or vessel, of elongated pear shape, derived from the architectural term.
Ballflower - Oxford Definition
The most distinctive ornament of English Decorated architecture in the early 14th century, particularly in Hereford and Gloucester cathedrals, it consists of a globular shaped carving, usually of three stylized leaves clutching a small ball. Ballflower (or ‘bellflower’) is an antiquarian term, suggesting analogies with a flower bud, or possibly small bells, as on an animal collar.
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