pastiglia

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noun

Low relief decoration, normally modelled in gesso or white lead, applied to build up a surface that may then be gilded or painted, or left plain.

OriginItalian pastiglia →
Scrabble 12
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Meanings

nounpastiglia (uncountable)
  1. uncountableLow relief decoration, normally modelled in gesso or white lead, applied to build up a surface that may then be gilded or painted, or left plain.

    But it was the white-lead pastiglia box that was closest to the cassone in both form and decoration.

    2005, Malcolm Bull, “Objects”, in The Mirror of the Gods: How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford, Oxon: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 39
    2 more examples

    Sassetta was his example, but Berenson actually missed the only element in that artist’s oeuvre that can lay claim to Asian influence: the pastiglia in the frame of the San Sepolcro altarpiece, in which the pattern of intertwined morning glories with the buds and leaves seen from different points of view is Chinese in origin (Fig. 4).

    2014, Carl Brandon Strehlke, “Bernard Berenson and Asian Art”, in Joseph Connors, Louis A[lexander] Waldman, editors, Bernard Berenson: Formation and Heritage, [Florence]: Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, →ISBN, page 213

    The set of prints also influenced manuscript and book illustrations, including borders of books of hours and frontispieces; also majolica dishes, such as two large dishes by Jacopo de Cafaggiolo, one of them dated 1514; Renaissance enamels; white lead pastiglia caskets; and bronze plaquettes.

    2021, Jean Michel Massing, “Prints and the Beginnings of Global Imagery”, in Grażyna Jurkowlaniec, Magdalena Herman, editors, The Reception of the Printed Image in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Multiplied and Modified (Routledge Research in Art History), New York, N.Y.; Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, →ISBN, part III (Images)

Origin

  1. Italianpastiglia
  2. Englishpastiglia

From Italian pastiglia. Doublet of pastegh, pastel, pastila, pastilla, and pastille.

More words from Italian

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

pastiglia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pastiglia

MLA

“pastiglia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pastiglia. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “pastiglia,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pastiglia.

Source: pastiglia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.