| A | B |
|---|
| addorsed | Set back-to-back, especially as in heraldic design. |
| alabaster | A variety of gypsum or calcite of dense, fine texture, usually white, but also red, yellow, gray, and sometimes banded. |
| apadana | The great audience hall in ancient Persian palaces. |
| apotropaic | apotropaic |
| arcade | A series of arches supported by piers or columns. |
| arch | A curved structural member that spans an opening and is generally composed of wedge-shaped blocks (voussoirs) that transmit the downward pressure laterally. A diaphragm arch is a transverse, wall-bearing arch that divides a vault or a ceiling into compartments, providing a kind of firebreak. See also thrust. |
| blind arcade (wall arcade) | An arcade having no actual openings, applied as decoration to a wall surface. |
| cella | The chamber (Greek naos) at the center of an ancient temple; in a classical temple, the room in which the cult statue usually stood. |
| city-state | An independent, self-governing city that rules the surrounding countryside. |
| cuneiform | Literally, “wedgeshaped.” A system of writing used in ancient Mesopotamia, in which wedge-shaped characters were produced by pressing a stylus into a soft clay tablet, which was then baked or otherwise allowed to harden. |
| cylinder seal | A cylindrical piece of stone usually about an inch or so in height, decorated with a design in intaglio (incised), so that a raised pattern was left when the seal was rolled over soft clay. In the ancient Near East documents, storage jars, and other important possessions were signed, sealed, and identified in this way. |
| diorite | An extremely hard stone used in Mesopotamian and Egyptian art. |
| facade | Usually, the front of a building; also, the other sides when they are emphasized architecturally. |
| foreshortening | The use of perspective to represent in art the apparent visual contraction of an object that extends back in space at an angle to the perpendicular plane of sight. |
| frieze | The part of the entablature between the architrave and the cornice; also, any sculptured or ornamented band in a building, on furniture, etc. |
| glaze | A vitreous coating applied to pottery to seal and decorate the surface; it may be colored, transparent, or opaque, and glossy or matte. In oil painting, a thin, transparent, or semitransparent layer put over a color to alter it slightly. |
| glazed brick | Bricks painted and then kiln fired to fuse the color with the baked clay. |
| ground | A coating applied to a canvas or some other surface to prepare that surface for painting; also, background. |
| ground line | In paintings and reliefs, a painted or carved base line on which figures appear to stand. |
| hierarchy of scale | An artistic convention in which greater size indicates greater importance. |
| iwan | In Islamic architecture, a vaulted rectangular recess opening onto a courtyard. |
| lamassu | In Assyrian art, guardians in the form of man-headed winged bulls. |
| lapis lazuli | A rich, ultramarine, semiprecious stone used for carving and as a source for pigment. |
| modeling | The shaping or fashioning of three-dimensional forms in a soft material, such as clay; also, the gradations of light and shade reflected from the surfaces of matter in space, or the illusion of such gradations produced by alterations of value in a drawing, painting, or print. |
| pictograph | A picture, usually stylized, that represents an idea; also, writing using such means; also painting on rock. |
| putto (pl. putti) | A cherubic young boy, a favorite subject in Italian painting and sculpture. |
| register | One of a series of superimposed bands in a pictorial narrative, or the particular levels on which motifs are placed. |
| repoussé | Formed in relief by beating a metal plate from the back, leaving the impression on the face. The metal is hammered into a hollow mold of wood or some other pliable material and finished with a graver. See also relief. |
| stele | A carved stone slab used to mark graves and to commemorate historical events. |
| stylus | A needlelike tool used in engraving and incising. |
