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tondo

American  
[ton-doh, tawn-daw] / ˈtɒn doʊ, ˈtɔn dɔ /

noun

tondi plural
  1. a round painting or relief.


tondo British  
/ ˈtɒndəʊ /

noun

  1. a circular easel painting or relief carving

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of tondo

First recorded in 1885–90; from Italian: “plate, circle, round painting,” noun use of the adjective: “round,” shortening of rotondo, from Latin rotundus “wheel-shaped, circular, round”

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

It’s a celestial tondo of the posthuman, a portal to the angels or their digital avatars.

From New York Times Aug. 3, 2023

The obliteration of Geta’s head made the tondo a statement of the owner’s obedience to Caracalla.

From Slate Apr. 11, 2022

The exhibition’s centerpiece is a tondo, or round painting, called “Terranuova Madonna” from about 1505 that Raphael created shortly after his arrival in Florence.

From Washington Times Dec. 11, 2019

In the fourth and most dramatic room of the National Gallery of Art’s captivating Piero di Cosimo retrospective, the walls are devoted to paintings in the round, a form known as a tondo.

From Washington Post Jan. 29, 2015

This relief, a marble tondo, is in such abnormally perfect condition that one wonders if it may not be a later replica of some original which the atmosphere disintegrated.

From Donatello, by Lord Balcarres by Crawford, David Lindsay, Earl of

There is more of atmosphere, of colour suggestion, and of chiaroscuro in the marble tondi described above.

From The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti by Symonds, John Addington

Over the niches are tondi with the insignia of each Art.

From The Story of Florence by Gardner, Edmund G.

Somehow these tondi, as they are called, became fashionable in Florence about the middle of the latter half of the fifteenth century, and when he was about thirty Botticelli painted a series.

From The Century of Columbus by Walsh, James J.

The refined features had that subtle expression of suffering and lassitude which lends the human charm to the Virgins of the Florentine tondi of the time of Cosimo.

From The Child of Pleasure by Harding, Georgina

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