Latin Terms

Grazia

Vasari's term for the indefinable grace that makes a work appear effortless — the un non so che of perfect art.

Martello

The general Italian term for a hammer, including those used in sculpture, stone carving, masonry, and metalworking.

Sedes Sapientiae

A traditional title for the Virgin Mary in Christian theology and sacred art, referring to Mary as the throne or vessel through which Divine Wisdom — Christ — enters the world.

Volute

A spiral or scroll-shaped ornament, most famously the paired spirals of an Ionic capital.

Composition

Composition governs how mass, void, and axis resolve in a sculptural work — differently in relief than in the round, as Gothic portal programs and Rodin's Burghers of Calais each demonstrate.

Art

The disciplined exercise of reason in making — recta ratio factibilium (Thomas Aquinas) — as applied to the plastic and sculptural arts.

Bacchanal

A Dionysian scene of ecstatic revelry — sculpture's classic vehicle for extreme pathos and figures in violent motion.

Bestiary

The medieval animal-lore manuscript tradition that supplied the carved beasts of Romanesque and Gothic capitals and portals.

Brachium

Latin term for the upper arm — and, in cathedral architecture, the transept arm of a cruciform church.

Brachium Domini

"The arm of the Lord" — the outstretched divine hand emerging from clouds, a formula for God's power without a full figure.