Forms: 7–8 basse relieve, base relief, bas-relieve, 8–9 bass-relief, bas-relief. [a. F. bas-relief, ad. It. basso-rilievo, low RELIEF. Cf. BASSO-RELIEVO.]

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  1.  Low relief; sculpture or carved work in which the figures project less than one half of their true proportions from the surface on which they are carved.

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1696.  Phillips, Base Relief … emboss’d work. 1706, Basso Relievo, Bass or Low Relief … when the work is low, flat, or but a little raised.

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a. 1711.  Ken, Hymnotheo, Wks. 1721, III. 192. Upon the Frontispiece … In bas-relieve the Story was impress’d, Of Lazarus and Dives.

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1755.  Johnson, Bass-relief.

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1843.  Prescott, Mexico, IV. i. (1864), 205. Two statues of that monarch … cut in bas-relief in the porphyry.

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  attrib.  1884.  A. F. Oakey, in Harper’s Mag., Feb., 350/1. The lithic forms must give place to a more bass-relief treatment of the whole structure.

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  2.  concr. A sculpture or carving in low relief.

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1667.  Oldenburg, in Phil. Trans., II. 420. Excellent Pictures and Basse Relieves.

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1762.  H. Walpole, Vertue’s Anecd. Paint. (1786), II. 58. The basrelief … of James I. on horseback.

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1858.  Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Jrnls., I. 196. Bas-reliefs the figures of which almost step and struggle out of the marble.

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