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Glite Dictionary
🕯️ Altar backdrop ✝️ Altar table
retable

retable

9.9
Decorated screen behind an altar that holds candles or religious art
  • noun
  • /ˈrɛtəbl/
  • Specialized
translation icon : retablo
  • The beautiful retable displayed intricate carvings of biblical scenes behind the altar.

Examples

  • Through the screen's open central doorway, a carved retable can be seen, but the altar itself is obscured by two angels who occupy the space, singing from a book.

    Academic text (2000)

  • Indeed, the theme of the Lamentation would more appropriately have adorned a retable or an epitaph in a burial chapel than the main altar of a Cistercian church.

    Academic text (1993)

  • The overall movement of the entire open retable (Fig. 12) proceeds from left to right, from the Garden of Eden through the world to the gates of Hell itself.

    Academic text (2001)

  • It is hard to find in the drawings any evidence for a view that has some currency today, that the Magnifici Tomb was conceived, from the start, as a combination of tomb and retable.

    Academic text (1992)

  • 51 joiners collaborated with carvers in making retables, and they occasionally belonged to the Guild of St. Luke as well as their own.

    Academic text (1990)

  • PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): 30 Ludwig Juppe, Retable. Kalkar, Nikolauskirche (photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv)

    Academic text (1993)

  • PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): 13 Tilman Riemenschneider, Altar Retable. Maidbronn (photo: Foto Marburg/Art Resource, N.Y.)

    Academic text (1993)

  • Lynn Jacobs has also suggested that the Pand might have been used to sell prefabricated pieces used in making retables, such as architectural friezes, which joiners carved.

    Academic text (1990)

  • During the service, the retable served as a striking backdrop for the priest's prayers.

  • The old church featured a stunning retable that held candles and paintings of saints.

Synonyms

altarpiece
vsretable
1 8.6

A painted or carved panel placed above and behind an altar in a church showing religious pictures

is used mainly to hold candles or items rather than purely as painted imagery
retablo
vsretable
  • UK
9.9

A decorated structure behind a church altar with paintings and carvings

is more about holding candles or displaying items than being richly decorated
reredos
vsretable
  • Specialized
9.9

A decorated screen behind and above a church altar

focuses more on practical display and candle placement than on ornamentation

Surface Forms

retable singular
retables plural

Morphology

retable = table (opaque) = re + table

Although the form corresponds to 're-' + 'table', the specialized ecclesiastical meaning 'altarpiece/structure behind the altar' is not transparently derived by an average learner and 're-' does not convey the expected meaning 'behind' in modern English.

Etymology

The word retable comes from an old French word made of re- 'back' and table 'table'. It originally meant something placed 'behind the table' of the altar, which is why a retable is the decorative screen or artwork you see behind the altar.