easel

    Stand on which a painting is supported while the artist works on it. The oldest representation of an easel is on an Egyptian relief of the Old Kingdom (c. 2600-2150 BC). Renaissance illustrations of the artist at work show all kinds of contrivances, the commonest being the three-legged easel with pegs, such as we still use today. Light folding easels were not made until the 18th and 19th centuries, when painters took to working out of doors. The studio easel, a 19th-century invention, is a heavy piece of furniture, which runs on castors or wheels, and served to impress the c1ients of portrait painters. Oil painters need an easel which will support the canvas almost vertically or tip it slightly forward to prevent reflection from the wet paint, whereas the watercolourist must be able to lay his paper nearly flat so that the wet paint will not run down. The term 'easel-painting' is applied to any picture small enough to have been painted on a standard easel.

Ecce Homo (Lat. "Behold the Man!")

    The words of Pontius Pilate in the Gospel of St. John (19, 5) when he presents Jesus to the crowds. Hence, in art, a depiction of Jesus, bound and flogged, wearing a crown of thorns and a scarlet robe.

en face

    In portraiture, a pose in which the sitter faces the viewer directly; full face.

enamel

    Coloured glass in powder form and sometimes bound with oil, which is bonded to a metal surface or plaque by firing.

engraving

    A print made from a metal plate that has had a design cut into it with a sharp point. Ink is smeared over the plate and then wiped off, the ink remaining in the etched lines being transferred when the plate is pressed very firmly onto a sheet of paper.

ensemble (Fr. "together")

    A combining of several media grouped together to form a composite art work. Chapels were among the most notable Renaissance ensembles, sometimes combining panel painting, fresco, sculpture, and architecture.

entablature

    In classical architecture, the part of a building between the capitals of the columns and the roof. It consists of the architrave, the frieze, and the cornice.

epitaph (Gk. epistaphion)

    Pictures or tables with reliefs and inscriptions erected in honour of the deceased in churches or sepulchral chapels.

eschatology (Gk. eschaton, "last", and logos, "word")

    the science of the end of the world and beginning of a new world, and of the last things,death and resurrection.

Eucharist (Gk. eu, "good," and charis, "thanks")

    the sacrament of Holy Communion, celebrated with bread and wine, the most sacred moment of the Christian liturgy.

Evangelism

    The term is used in an Italian context to designate spiritual currents manifest around 1540 which might be said to have occupied the confessional middle ground between Catholicism and Protestantism; hence it does not relate at all to the term 'Evangelical' as used in German or English contexts. It has been applied particularly to the so-called spirituali of the Viterbo circle, notably Cardinal Pole, Vittoria Colonna, Marcantonio Flaminio, Carnesecchi and Ochino, and also to Giulia Gonzaga, Contarini, Giovanni Morone; Gregorio Cortese and Vermigli. Such persons combined a zeal for personal religious renewal with spiritual anxieties akin to those of Luther, to which they sought an answer in the study of St Paul and St Augustine; convinced of the inefficacy of human works, they stressed the role of faith and the all-efficacy of divine grace in justification. Few of them broke with the Catholic Church.