A semicircular wall area enframed by an arch over a door or window. Lunettes become pictorial fields onto which a painting, mosaic, or relief sculpture can be placed. Annibale Carracci, for example, painted a series of religious landscapes in c. 1604 to be installed in the lunettes of the chapel in the Aldobrandini Palace, Rome. Davide Ghirlandaio, Domenico's brother, rendered a mosaic of the Annunciation (1509) on the lunette above the main portal of the Church of Santisima Annunziata, Florence, and Benvenuto Cellini provided a relief of Diana, goddess of the hunt, for one of the doorway lunettes in the Palace of Fontainebleau near Paris (1542-1544; now Paris, Louvre). Lunettes are also sometimes part of wall tombs, as the Tomb of Chancellor Carlo Marsuppini (1453; Santa Croce, Florence) by Desiderio da Settignano exemplifies.
Historical dictionary of Renaissance art. Lilian H. Zirpolo. 2008.