Motif (visual arts) in the context of Confronted animals

The statue of Athena Parthenos (Ancient Greek: Παρθένος Ἀθηνᾶ, lit. 'Athena the Virgin') was a monumental chryselephantine sculpture of the goddess Athena. Attributed to Phidias and dated to the mid-fifth century BCE, it was an offering from the city of Athens to Athena, its tutelary deity. The naos of the Parthenon on the acropolis of Athens was designed exclusively to accommodate it.

Many artists and craftsmen worked on the realization of the sculpture, which was probably built around a core of cypress wood, and then paneled with gold and ivory plates. At about 13 meters high, the statue reflected the established aesthetic canon of the severe style (clothing) while adopting the innovations of the high classical (leg position). She was helmeted and held a large round shield and spear, placed on the ground to her left, next to her sacred snake. Clothes, jewellery, accessories, and even the statue base were decorated, mainly with the snake and gorgon motif.

The mosaics of Delos are a significant body of ancient Greek mosaic art. Most of the surviving mosaics from Delos, Greece, an island in the Cyclades, date to the last half of the 2nd century BC and early 1st century BC, during the Hellenistic period and beginning of the Roman period of Greece. Hellenistic mosaics were no longer produced after roughly 69 BC, due to warfare with the Kingdom of Pontus and the subsequently abrupt decline of the island's population and position as a major trading center. Among Hellenistic Greek archaeological sites, Delos contains one of the highest concentrations of surviving mosaic artworks. Approximately half of all surviving tessellated Greek mosaics from the Hellenistic period come from Delos.

The paved walkways of Delos range from simple pebble or chip-pavement constructions to elaborate mosaic floors composed of tesserae. Most motifs contain simple geometric patterns, while only a handful utilize the opus tessellatum and opus vermiculatum techniques to create lucid, naturalistic, and richly colored scenes and figures. Mosaics have been found in places of worship, public buildings, and private homes, the latter usually containing either an irregular-shaped floor plan or peristyle central courtyard.

Memento mori (Latin for "remember (that you have) to die") is an artistic symbol or trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. The concept has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onwards.

The most common motif is a skull, often accompanied by bones. Often, this alone is enough to evoke the trope, but other motifs include a coffin, hourglass, or wilting flowers to signify the impermanence of life. Often, these would accompany a different central subject within a wider work, such as portraiture; however, the concept includes standalone genres such as the vanitas and Danse Macabre in visual art and cadaver monuments in sculpture.

In Greek mythology, Leda (/ˈliːdə, ˈleɪ-/; Ancient Greek: Λήδα [lɛ́ːdaː]), also rendered Lede, was an Aetolian princess who became queen consort of Sparta through her marriage to King Tyndareus. Zeus fell in love with Leda, and to avoid his wife Hera's jealousy, seduced her while disguised as a swan. Leda was named as the mother of four famous children in Greek mythology: Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, and the twins Castor and Pollux. Leda and the Swan was a popular motif in the visual arts, particularly during the Renaissance.

In architecture and decorative art, ornament is decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornaments do not include human figures, and if present they are small compared to the overall scale. Architectural ornament can be carved from stone, wood or precious metals, formed with plaster or clay, or painted or impressed onto a surface as applied ornament; in other applied arts the main material of the object, or a different one such as paint or vitreous enamel may be used.

A wide variety of decorative styles and motifs have been developed for architecture and the applied arts, including pottery, furniture, metalwork. In textiles, wallpaper and other objects where the decoration may be the main justification for its existence, the terms pattern or design are more likely to be used. The vast range of motifs used in ornament draw from geometrical shapes and patterns, plants, and human and animal figures. Across Eurasia and the Mediterranean world there has been a rich and linked tradition of plant-based ornament for over three thousand years; traditional ornament from other parts of the world typically relies more on geometrical and animal motifs. The inspiration for the patterns usually lies in the nature that surrounds the people in the region. Many nomadic tribes in Central Asia had many animalistic motifs before the penetration of Islam in the region.

The Master of Animals, Lord of Animals, or Mistress of the Animals is a motif in ancient art showing a human between and grasping two confronted animals. The motif is very widespread in the art of Mesopotamia. The figure may be female or male, it may be a column or a symbol, the animals may be realistic or fantastical, and the human figure may have animal elements such as horns, an animal upper body, an animal lower body, legs, or cloven feet. Although what the motif represented to the cultures that created the works probably varies greatly, unless shown with specific divine attributes, when male the figure is typically described as a hero by interpreters.

The motif is so widespread and visually effective that many depictions probably were conceived as decoration with only a vague meaning attached to them. The Master of Animals is the "favorite motif of Achaemenian official seals", but the figures in these cases should be understood as the king.

The rock and wave design or motif is found painted on the outer borders of some Asian ceramics. It originated in Chinese porcelain of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and was later very often used in Iznik pottery and other Turkish ceramics. It represents turbulent waves breaking onto rocks, which are generally depicted as a regular pattern with a considerable degree of stylization, especially in Turkish examples. It is normally in blue and white, even where other parts of the piece use other colours.

The "rocks" are represented by blue spiral lines on a white background, and the waves by irregular shapes in white, sometimes with lines within them.

A geoglyph is a large design or motif – generally longer than 4 metres (13 ft) – produced on the ground by durable elements of the landscape, such as stones, stone fragments, gravel, or earth. A positive geoglyph is formed by the arrangement and alignment of materials on the ground in a manner akin to petroforms, while a negative geoglyph is formed by removing part of the natural ground surface to create differently coloured or textured ground in a manner akin to petroglyphs.

Geoglyphs are generally a type of land art, and sometimes rock art. A hill figure is created on a slope, so that it can be seen from a distance.

Walter Crane (15 August 1845 – 14 March 1915) was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.

Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come. He was part of the Arts and Crafts movement and produced an array of paintings, illustrations, children's books, ceramic tiles, wallpapers and other decorative arts. Crane is also remembered for his creation of a number of iconic images associated with the international socialist movement.

The whiplash or whiplash line is a motif of decorative art and design that was particularly popular in Art Nouveau. It is an asymmetrical, sinuous line, often in an ornamental S-curve, usually inspired by natural forms such as plants and flowers, which suggests dynamism and movement. It took its name from a woven fabric panel "Cyclamen", by the German artist Hermann Obrist (1895) which depicted the stems and roots of the cyclamen plant, which critics dubbed "Coup de Fouet" ('whiplash'). The panel was later reproduced by the textile workshop of the Darmstadt Artists Colony.

Curling whiplash lines were modelled after natural and vegetal forms, particularly the cyclamen, iris, orchid, thistle, mistletoe, holly, water lily, and from the stylized lines of the swan, peacock, dragonfly, and butterfly.

The right hand of God is a phrase used in the Bible and common speech as a metaphor for the omnipotence of God and as a motif in art. In the Bible, to be at the right side "is to be identified as being in the special place of honor". In "The Sheep and the Goats", one of the parables of Jesus, the sheep and goats are separated with the sheep on the right hand of God and the goats on the left hand.

It is also a placement next to God in Heaven, in the traditional place of honor, mentioned in the New Testament as the place of Christ at Mark 16:19, Luke 22:69, Matthew 22:44 and 26:64, Acts 2:34 and 7:55, 1 Peter 3:22 and elsewhere. These uses reflect use of the phrase in the Old Testament, for example in Psalms 63:8 and 110:1.The implications of this anthropomorphic phrasing have been discussed at length by theologians, including Saint Thomas Aquinas.

African art refers to works of visual art, including works of sculpture, painting, metalwork, and pottery, originating from the various peoples of the African continent and influenced by distinct, indigenous traditions of aesthetic expression.

While the various artistic traditions of such a large and diverse continent display considerable regional and cultural variety, there are consistent artistic themes, recurring motifs, and unifying elements across the broad spectrum of the African visual expression. As is the case for every artistic tradition in human history, African art was created within specific social, political, and religious contexts. Likewise, African art was often created not purely for art's sake, but rather with some practical, spiritual, and/or didactic purpose in mind. In general, African art prioritizes conceptual and symbolic representation over realism, aiming to visualize the subject's spiritual essence.

A chaitya, chaitya hall, chaitya-griha, (Sanskrit:Caitya; Pāli: Cetiya) refers to a shrine, sanctuary, temple or prayer hall in Indian religions. The term is most common in Buddhism, where it refers to a space with a stupa and a rounded apse at the end opposite the entrance, and a high roof with a rounded profile. Strictly speaking, the chaitya is the stupa itself, and the Indian buildings are chaitya halls, but this distinction is often not observed. Outside India, the term is used by Buddhists for local styles of small stupa-like monuments in Nepal, Cambodia, Indonesia and elsewhere. In Thailand a stupa itself, not a stupa hall, is called a chedi, a local Thai word derived from the Pali Cetiya. In the historical texts of Jainism and Hinduism, including those relating to architecture, chaitya refers to a temple, sanctuary or any sacred monument.

Most early examples of chaitya that survive are Indian rock-cut architecture. Scholars agree that the standard form follows a tradition of free-standing halls made of wood and other plant materials, none of which has survived. The curving ribbed ceilings imitate timber construction. In the earlier examples, timber was used decoratively, with wooden ribs added to stone roofs. At the Bhaja Caves and the "Great Chaitya" of the Karla Caves, the original timber ribs survive; elsewhere marks on the ceiling show where they once were. Later, these ribs were rock-cut. Often, elements in wood, such as screens, porches, and balconies, were added to stone structures. The surviving examples are similar in their broad layout, though the design evolved over the centuries.

The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foliate ornament, used in the Islamic world, typically using leaves, derived from stylised half-palmettes, which were combined with spiralling stems". It usually consists of a single design which can be 'tiled' or seamlessly repeated as many times as desired. Within the very wide range of Eurasian decorative art that includes motifs matching this basic definition, the term "arabesque" is used consistently as a technical term by art historians to describe only elements of the decoration found in two phases: Islamic art from about the 9th century onwards, and European decorative art from the Renaissance onwards. Interlace and scroll decoration are terms used for most other types of similar patterns.

Arabesques are a fundamental element of Islamic art. The past and current usage of the term in respect of European art is confused and inconsistent. Some Western arabesques derive from Islamic art, however others are closely based on ancient Roman decorations. In the West they are essentially found in the decorative arts, but because of the generally non-figurative nature of Islamic art, arabesque decoration is often a very prominent element in the most significant works, and plays a large part in the decoration of architecture.

The Potnia Theron (Ancient Greek: Ἡ Πότνια Θηρῶν, romanized: Hē Pótnia Therôn, lit. 'The Lady of Animals', [hɛː pót.ni.a tʰɛː.rɔ̂ːn]) or Mistress of Animals is a widespread motif in ancient art from the Mediterranean world and the ancient Near East, showing a central human, or human-like, female figure who grasps two animals, one to each side. Although the connections between images and concepts in the various ancient cultures concerned remain very unclear, such images are often referred to by the Greek term Potnia Theron regardless of culture of origin.

The term is first used once by Homer as a descriptor of Artemis and often used to describe female divinities associated with animals. The word Potnia, meaning mistress or lady, was a Mycenaean Greek word inherited by Classical Greek, with the same meaning, cognate to Sanskrit patnī.