Relief of the Dancing Maenads

myminifactory

Who is Depicted? In Greek mythology, maenads were female followers of Dionysus who were a crucial part of his retinue. The name literally translates to "raving ones." Maenads were known as Bassarids or Bacchantes in Roman mythology due to the penchant of their equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, for wearing a bassaris or fox-skin. Often, maenads were portrayed as being inspired by Dionysus into an ecstatic state of frenzy through a combination of dancing and intoxication. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and topped with a pine cone. They would weave ivy wreaths around their heads or wear a bull helmet in honor of their god and often handle or wear snakes. Technical Specifications about the Statue Relief is a sculptural technique where elements remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term relief comes from the Latin verb relevo, which means "to raise." To create a sculpture in relief gives the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What actually happens when a relief is cut into a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In materials like metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics, or papier-mâché, the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting. There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato. Sunk relief was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. The distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work.