Halo (religious iconography) obsolete "nimbated", like the commoner "nimbate", means "furnished with a nimbus". It is sometimes preferred by art-historians, as sounding more technical than halo. "Aureole", from the Latin for "golden", has been used in English as a term for a gold crown, especially that traditionally considered the reward of martyrs, since the Middle Ages (OED 1220). But the first use recorded as a term for a halo is in 1848, very shortly after which matters were greatly complicated by the publication in 1851 of the English translation of Adolphe Napoléon Didron's important "Christian Iconography: Or, The History of Christian Art in
What Is Art? Aylmer Maude, translator of many of Tolstoy's writings, calls it "probably the most masterly of all Tolstoy's works", citing the difficulty of the subject matter and its clarity. For a comprehensive review of the reception at the time of publication, see Maude 1901"b". Bayley, John (1986 [1966]). ""What is Art?" - excerpt from Tolstoy and the Novel" in Bloom, Harold (ed.). Leo Tolstoy. New York: Chelsea House. p. 141-152. Jahn, Gary R. (1975). "The aesthetic theory of Leo Tolstoy's "What is Art?"". "Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism" 34 (1): 59-65. Maude, Aylmer (1901a). “"What is Art?" - An Introduction”,