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BUST

Volume 5 · 186 words · 1810 Edition

or BUSTO, in Sculpture, denotes the figure or portrait of a person in relievo, showing only the head, shoulders, and stomach, the arms being lopped off: ordinarily placed on a pedestal or console.

In speaking of an antique, we say the head is marble, and the bust porphyry, or bronze, that is, the stomach and shoulders. Felibien observes, that though in painting, one may say a figure appears in busto, yet it is not properly called a bust, that word being confined to things in relievo.

The bust is the same with what the Latins called Hermo, from the Greek Hermes, Mercury, the image of that god being frequently represented in this manner amongst the Athenians.

Bust is also used, especially by the Italians, for the trunk of a human body, from the neck to the hips.

Busta Gallica, was a place in ancient Rome, wherein the bones of the Gauls, who first took the city, and were slain by Camillus, were deposited. It differed from Busta Gallorum, a place on the Apennines, thus called by reason of many thousands of Gauls killed there by Fabius.