To provide a liquid crystal display, particularly, a retardation plate for contributing to the improvement of the field angle of the liquid crystal display of an IPS mode and STN mode.

The retardation plate includes a transparent support, an alignment film formed of a composition having an acid effectively acting polyvinyl alcohol-based polymer, a multifunctional aldehyde compound crosslinking and hard-coating the polymer and a crosslinking hard coating thereon, and an optical anisotropic layer aligned and controlled on a rubbing processing face of the alignment film, and formed of a discotheque liquid crystal compound fixed in the alignment state. The optically anisotropic layer contains an additive enlarging an angle making a vertical line of a director and a layer plane in an air interface of molecules of the discotic-type liquid crystal compound more than a non-addition state.