mandorla

/ mænˈdɔːlə /

noun

1. Also called: vesica. (in painting, sculpture, etc) an almond-shaped area of light, usually surrounding the resurrected Christ or the Virgin at the Assumption

Word History and Origins

Origin of mandorla¹

from Italian, literally: almond, from Late Latin amandula; see _almond

Example Sentences

Laura Aguilar’s “Grounded #111,” from a large series that likely gave the show its name, poses her corpulent nude body before a majestic boulder in the Joshua Tree desert, as if a secular saint enclosed within a sacred mandorla.

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On “Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds,” a 2017 LP influenced by Octavia Butler’s writings, the poet and vocalist Avery R. Young lends Pentecostal flair to lines of earnest recognition — “I want to pick up my blade/But then again there’s gotta be another way,” he hollers — while Mitchell’s flute whips and shivers around him, a well-contained force of nature.

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She “bursts forth from the Virgin’s traditional flaming mandorla, throws off her star-spangled cloak and dashes straight toward us, beaming, into the future,” New York Times art critic Holland Cotter wrote in 1999.

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Another, composed of gleaming copper radiates a tawny mandorla.

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It is true, whisked egg whites make for the most tender marzipan-hearted paste di mandorla, the sugar-coated, jewel-studded bling that fills the grass-fronted counters of Sicilian pastry shops, and sends puffs of icing sugar down the front of your T-shirt.

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