Množina: altars

ETYM Old Eng. alter, auter, autier, from Latin altare, pl. altaria, altar, prob. from altus high: cf. Old Fren. alter, autier, French autel. Related to Altitude.
(Homonym: alter).
1. A raised structure on which gifts or sacrifices to a god are made.
2. The table in Christian churches where communion is given; SYN. communion table, Lord's table.

Množina: altar boys

A boy serving as an acolyte. altar-boy

Množina: altar cloths

altar-cloth

Množina: altar-tombs

Množina: altarpieces

A painted or carved screen placed above and behind an altar or communion table; SYN. reredos.
A painting (more rarely a sculpture) placed on, behind, or above an altar in a Christian church. Altarpieces vary greatly in size, construction, and number of images (diptych, triptych, and polyptych). Some are small and portable; some (known as a retable or reredos, there is no clear distinction) are fixed.
A typical Italian altarpiece has a large central panel, flanked by subsidiary panels, with a predella, or strip of scenes, across the bottom. Spanish altarpieces tend to be architecturally elaborate retables. A popular form in northern Europe was the winged altarpiece, in which outer wings are hinged so that they can be closed to cover the center panel.
Outstanding altarpieces include Duccio’s Maestà 1308–11 (Cathedral Museum, Siena), Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece about 1515 (Unterlinden Museum, Colmar), and van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystical Lamb 1432 (St Bavon, Ghent).
From a pictorial point of view it became important during the Gothic period as an alternative to wall-painting, partly because the diminished wall space of the Gothic church offered fewer opportunities for large-scale decoration, but also as the result of a growing desire for realistic representation, better achieved on a comparatively small scale. It often consisted of a set of
hinged and folding panels, painted on either side. Large polyptychs in elaborate Gothic frames, several stories high and divided into a number of compartments, formed the retables which gave a special character to Spanish churches. An ancestral form of the easel picture, it ultimately became an oil-painting on canvas let into the wall behind the altar.
altar piece