Art Terms Glossary

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Backplate
An armor plate for protection of the back; corresponds to the breastplate, to which it is attached by straps or hinges. Normally forged in one piece to fit the body, with additional plates (lames) attached to protect the lower back region.

Barbute
A tall open helmet of Italian origin, often with a pointed apex (later rounded), cheekpieces, and a small face-opening; in use from about 1350 to the end of the fifteenth century.

Bard
A comprehensive term for armor protecting the horse - made first of mail, later of plate.

Bas-de-page
Lower margin; area below the textblock on a manuscript page.

Basinet
A light helmet in use during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The headpiece is generally ogival or egg-shaped, usually fitted with a pointed visor and a mail neckpiece (camail) for defense of the throat and neck.

Benediction
A petition for blessing.

Beta radiography
An imaging technique that uses a diffuse electron energy source (a source plate composed of a thin acrylic sheet embedded with radioactive carbon-14) to produce an image on photographic film. The plate emits high-speed beta electrons as the carbon isotope decays. The beta particles have low energy and pass harmlessly through a work of art on paper to expose an image on photographic film depending on subtle differences in the paper thickness. This technique helps record clear high contrast images of watermarks.

Bevor
An element of plate for defense of the lower face and throat. Can be either a separate piece worn with a helmet such as the sallet, or an attached piece worn with the close helmet.

Bifolio
A single sheet folded in half to form two folios or four pages.

Bill
A staff weapon with an asymmetrical head usually fashioned to include a spike, a curved cutting hook in front, balanced with a short spike in back. Derived from an agricultural instrument and popular with the English and Italian infantries of the fifteenth century.

Binding media
The (usually) liquid (egg, water, or oil) in which pigments are mixed to create paints.

Bishop
A Roman Catholic clergyman ranking above a priest. A bishop has the ability to ordain and confirm and typically governs over a diocese, a territorial area of administration.

Bistre Ink
is made by boiling or soaking wood soot in water to extract the soluble tars; this liquid is then filtered and results in a transparent and luminous ink, the exact tone of which depends on the kind of wood used.

Black Chalk
A naturally occurring composite of carbon and clay that can be cut and sawed into a stick and sharpened to a point for use as a drawing instrument. Cortona's idealized head of a youth shows the extremely refined shading that is possible with black chalk. Cortona used a combination of parallel hatching and stumping to achieve the fine gradations of surface tone that give this head three-dimensional volume.

Black Ink
An ink prepared by incorporating a black carbon pigment derived from soot or charcoal into water mixed with a binding agent, usually gum arabic. Often the terms India Ink or Chinese Ink are used to refer to black ink, because dry ink sticks made with carbon pigment mixed with gum and resin, and hardened by baking, were imported into Europe from the East as early as the 1500s.

Blaise
Christian martyr believed to have been bishop of Sebaste in Asian Minor early in the 4th century.

Blanquart-évrard process
Enhancements to salted paper prints introduced by Louis-Désiré Blanquart-évrard in 1851. This process produced a paper very sensitive to light and less susceptible to fading, so that it needed just a few seconds exposure time before being developed. After being soaked in a solution of gelatin potassium bromide and iodide, the paper was dried and stored. Before exposure it was sensitized to light with a solution of silver nitrate and nitric acid. The improvements in the developing speed allowed several hundred prints to be printed quickly from one negative, mostly for mounting in books or albums. Blanquart-évrard's technical changes stimulated the short-lived, but distinguished period of French salt prints by such artists as édouard Baldus, the Bisson brothers, Nadar, Charles Négre, and Henri-Victor Regnault.

Blindstamp
An inkless impression embossed directly on a photograph or the mount to which it is attached, used for identification purposes. Popular during the nineteenth century and in some commercial photography today, blindstamps usually spell the name and address of the photographer or, in some instances, the collector.

Bluing
The process of applying heat to metal to achieve a deep blue color.

Boar Spear
A spear with a broad, leaf-shaped blade (often elaborately decorated) and a cross-toggle below; originally used in boar hunting.

Bole
A fine colored clay applied to a work of art to support gold leaf. The extremely fine particle size allows the gold to be rubbed or burnished to create a bright metallic surface. Because the gold leaf is so thin it is somewhat transparent and its color is modified by the bole color. Red bole , the most common color, adds to it warmth.

Book of Hours
A prayer book intended for lay use in private or family devotions. Books of hours typically contain a compendium of prayers and devotions dedicated to the Virgin Mary and recited or sung at the canonical hours (eight set times during the day). To this core were appended other elements such as a calendar, penitential psalms, litanies, suffrages, etc. Elaborate versions contain a full cycle of miniatures as well as involved marginal decorations. Books of hours form the most popular and abundant of all surviving medieval manuscripts.

Brandistock
A staff weapon consisting of a tubular shaft that conceals either a single blade or a set of three blades within an aperture. By jerking the weapon forward, the blades could be released and locked with a catch, ready for action. Widely used from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, both in civilian and military versions.

Breastplate
An armor plate for protection of the chest and abdomen; normally worn together with a backplate and fitted with flexible plates (lames) below to protect the lower abdomen.

Breath
Holes or slits for ventilation in the lower visor of a helmet.

Breech
The rear end of a cannon or gun barrel; usually the point of ignition.

Breviary
Liturgical book comprising hymns, readings, psalms, anthems, and other prayers for the reading of the Daily Office, required of all priests, monks, and nuns.

Brigandine
A type of armored sleeveless jacket, used principally by infantry throughout the fifteenth century and until the middle of the sixteenth century, consisting of numerous small overlapping plates of metal attached with rivets to the back of a cloth support. Fine examples are often faced with colorful velvet.

Broadsword
A sword with a straight, wide, two-edged blade used by European heavy cavalry through the nineteenth century.

Bromoil print
A contact print or, more often, an enlargement made on gelatin silver bromide paper treated with a solution of potassium bichromate to bleach out the dark silver image. This process hardened the gelatin, preparing it to absorb the hand coloring of oil-based pigments applied with special brushes. The word bromoil is a combination of the original bromide print and the oil pigments. Bromoils can be produced in any color, with a broad tonal range and a wide latitude for changing the appearance of the image, but they do not have the clarity and resolution of gelatin silver prints. Developed around 1907 by C. Welbourne Piper and Edward John Wall (1860-1928), the bromoil process was popular with pictorialist photographers and the Photo-Secessionists until the 1930s.

Brown earth
Brown earth pigments (ochers, siennas, and umbers) containing silica, clay and a mixture of iron oxides along with small amounts of manganese dioxide.

Brown Ink
The brown inks we associate today with old master drawings are generally one of three types: bistre, sepia, or iron gall.

Buffcoat
A defensive coat made of buff (boeuf) leather thick enough to resist a sword cut; used primarily for cavalry in the seventeenth century, when plate armor was falling into disuse.

Buffe
A separate, usually detachable, element of plate armor worn with an open helmet to protect the face and throat.

Burgonet
A light, open helmet characterized by a peak, a fall over the eyes, and hinged earpieces; used by cavalry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sometimes worn with a buffe.

Burning-in and dodging
Techniques used in printing to alter the tonality of an image by darkening areas that are too light and lightening areas that are too dark. For part of the exposure time the photographer interposes something opaque, such as a piece of cardboard or paper, between the image and the light source, moving it back and forth to control the exposure throughout specific areas of the print surface. A hole pierced in the cardboard or paper can also direct light strategically onto the photographic surface.

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