Aureola Aureola An aureola or aureole (diminutive of Latin "aurea", "golden") is the radiance of luminous cloud which, in paintings of sacred personages, surrounds the whole figure. In Neolatin languages (as Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French) the noun Aureola is usually more related to the disc of light surrounding the head of sacred figures and that in English is called Halo or Nimbus. In the earliest periods of Christian art it was confined to the figures of the persons of the Christian Godhead, but it was afterwards extended to the Virgin Mary and to several of the saints. The aureola, when
Aureole effect plane. Although the focused (light) ray cones are actually more or less parallel to each other, the rays from the aureole effect appear to be radiating from the shadow of the viewer’s head due to perspective effects. The viewer's line of sight is parallel and lies within the cones, so from the viewer's perspective the rays seem to be radiating from the antisolar point, within the viewer's shadow. As in similar antisolar optical effects (such as a glory or Heiligenschein), each observer will see an aureole effect radiating only from their own head’s shadow. Similarly, if a photographer holds their