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altarpiece

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.01 sec.

altarpiece

Painting, relief, sculpture, screen, or decorated wall standing on or behind an altar in a Christian church. The images depict holy personages, saints, and biblical subjects. There are two types of altarpieces: the reredos, which rises from the floor behind the altar, and the retable, which stands on the altar itself or on a pedestal behind it. The diptych is an altarpiece consisting of two panels; a triptych, three panels; and a polyptych, four or more panels. Altarpieces vary in size; some are small and portable, some are huge and stationary, and some have movable wings that can be opened and closed. The practice of erecting sculptural altarpieces dates from the 11th century; altar paintings became common in the 14th century.


altarpiece
a work of art set above and behind an altar; a reredos


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The young Dominican's first major commission, painted between 1419 and 1421, was the main altarpiece for the church of San Domenico in Fiesole.
For example, his early reinterpretations of the Annunciation as a single-panel altarpiece (Madrid and Cortona), where painted architecture both proposed and transgressed the traditional divisions of a triptych, were further developments of the Lorenzetti experiments in the fourteenth century.
The sixty-member Juilliard Choral Union joined the dancers upstage in an altarpiece from which the dancers descended.
 
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