Everything about Tondo Art totally explained
A
tondo (plural "tondi") is a Renaissance term for a circular work of art, either a painting or a sculpture. The word derives from the
Italian rotondo, "round." The term is usually not used in English for small round paintings, but only those over about two foot in diameter, thus excluding many round
portrait miniatures.
Since
Greek antiquity artists have created tondi, particularly in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Since then it has been less common. In
Ford Madox Brown's painting
The Last of England, the ship's wire railing curving round the figures helps enclose the composition within its tondo shape.
The background scene is consolidated or omitted, and to a large extent, unimportant. While the background may be visible in tondo paintings, in tondo relief carvings the background isn't seen.
Andrea Della Robbia and other members of his family created glazed terracotta
tondi that were often framed in a wreath of fruit and leaves and which were intended for immuring in a stuccoed wall. In
Brunelleschi's
Hospital of the Innocents, Florence, 1421–24,
Andrea Della Robbia provided glazed terracotta babes in swaddling clothes in tondos with plain blue backgrounds to be set in the
spandrels of the arches.
The portrait of the
Greek poet
Menander is an example of a tondo. The painting of the inside of the broad low winecup called a
kylix also lent itself to circular enframed compositions. In the sixteenth century the painterly style of
istoriato decoration for
maiolica wares was applied to large circular dishes: see also
charger.
The tondo has also been used as a design element in
architecture since the
Renaissance; it may serve centered in the gable-end of a
pediment or under the round-headed
arch that was revived in the fifteenth century.
The tondo became fashionable in 15th century
Florence, with
Botticelli painting many examples, both
Madonnas and narrative scenes.
Michelangelo employed the cicular tondo for several compositions, both painted and sculpted, including
The Holy Family with the infant St. John the Baptist, the famous
Doni Tondo at the
Uffizi, as did
Raphael.
The infrequently-encountered synonym
rondo much more usually refers to a musical form.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Tondo Art'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://tondo__art.totallyexplained.com">Tondo (art) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
