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"Sculptor" redirects here. For other uses, see Sculptor (disambiguation) and Sculpture
(disambiguation).

The Dying Gaul, or The Capitoline Gaul [1] a Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic work of the late 3rd
century BCE Capitoline Museums, Rome

Assyrian lamassu gate guardian fromKhorsabad, c. 721800 BCE

Michelangelo's Moses, (c. 15131515), San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, for the tomb of Pope Julius II.

Netsuke of tigress with two cubs, mid-19th century Japan, ivory with shell inlay

The Angel of the North by Antony Gormley, 1998

Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of
the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material)
and modelling (the addition of material, as clay), in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other
materials but, since Modernism, there has been an almost complete freedom of materials
and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving,
assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast.
Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often
represents the majority of the surviving works (other than pottery) from ancient cultures,
though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished almost entirely.
However, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, and this has been lost. [2]
Sculpture has been central in religious devotion in many cultures, and until recent centuries
large sculptures, too expensive for private individuals to create, were usually an expression
of religion or politics. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the
cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, as well as many in South America
and Africa.
The Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as
producing great masterpieces in the classicalperiod. During the Middle
Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith. The
revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such
as Michelangelo's David. Modernist sculpture moved away from traditional processes and the
emphasis on the depiction of the human body, with the making of constructed sculpture, and
the presentation of found objects as finished art works.
Contents
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1Types of sculpture

2Purposes and subjects

3Materials and techniques

3.1Stone

3.2Metal

3.3Glass

3.4Pottery

3.5Wood carving

4Social status of sculptors

5Anti-sculpture movements

6History of sculpture
o

6.1Prehistoric periods

6.2Ancient Near East

6.3Ancient Egypt

6.4Europe
6.4.1Ancient Greece

6.4.1.1Classical

6.4.1.2Hellenistic
6.4.2Europe after the Greeks

6.4.2.1Roman sculpture

6.4.2.2Early Medieval and Byzantine

6.4.2.3Romanesque

6.4.2.4Gothic

6.4.3Renaissance

6.4.4Mannerist

6.4.5Baroque and Rococo

6.4.6Neo-Classical
6.5Asia

6.5.1Greco-Buddhist sculpture and Asia

6.5.2China

6.5.3Japan

6.5.4India

6.5.5South-East Asia

6.6Islam

6.7Africa

6.8The Americas
6.8.1Pre-Columbian

6.9Moving toward modern art

6.9.1North America

6.1019thearly 20th century, early Modernism and continuing realism

7Modernism

7.1Gallery of modernist sculpture

7.2Contemporary movements

7.3Minimalism

7.3.1Postminimalism

7.3.2Contemporary genres

8Conservation

9See also

10Notes

11References

12External links

Types of sculpture[edit]
A basic distinction is between sculpture in the round, free-standing sculpture, such
as statues, not attached (except possibly at the base) to any other surface, and the various
types of relief, which are at least partly attached to a background surface. Relief is often
classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, and
sometimes an intermediate mid-relief. Sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt.
Relief is the usual sculptural medium for large figure groups and narrative subjects, which
are difficult to accomplish in the round, and is the typical technique used both for architectural
sculpture, which is attached to buildings, and for small-scale sculpture decorating other
objects, as in much pottery, metalwork and jewellery. Relief sculpture may also
decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, often also containing inscriptions.
Another basic distinction is between subtractive carving techniques, which remove material
from an existing block or lump, for example of stone or wood, and modelling techniques
which shape or build up the work from the material. Techniques such as casting, stamping
and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work; many of
these allow the production of several copies.

Open air Buddhist rock reliefs at theLongmen Grottos, China

The term "sculpture" is often used mainly to describe large works, which are sometimes
called monumental sculpture, meaning either or both of sculpture that is large, or that is
attached to a building. But the term properly covers many types of small works in three
dimensions using the same techniques, including coins and medals, hardstone carvings, a
term for small carvings in stone that can take detailed work.

The very large or "colossal" statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity; the largest on
record at 128 m (420 ft) is the 2002 Chinese Spring Temple Buddha. Another grand form of
portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in
recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the "head", showing just
that, or the bust, a representation of a person from the chest up. Small forms of sculpture
include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches (46 cm) tall, and for
reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin.
Modern and contemporary art have added a number of non-traditional forms of sculpture,
including sound sculpture, light sculpture, environmental art,environmental sculpture, street
art sculpture, kinetic sculpture (involving aspects of physical motion), land art, and sitespecific art. Sculpture is an important form of public art. A collection of sculpture in a garden
setting can be called a sculpture garden.

Purposes and subjects[edit]

Moai from Easter Island, where the concentration of resources on large sculpture may have had
serious political effects.

One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in some form of association with
religion. Cult images are common in many cultures, though they are often not the colossal
statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art, like the Statue of Zeus at Olympia.
The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have
survived, were evidently rather small, even in the largest temples. The same is often true
in Hinduism, where the very simple and ancient form of the lingam is the most
common. Buddhism brought the sculpture of religious figures to East Asia, where there

seems to have been no earlier equivalent tradition, though again simple shapes like
the bi and cong probably had religious significance.
Small sculptures as personal possessions go back to the earliest prehistoric art, and the use
of very large sculpture as public art, especially to impress the viewer with the power of a
ruler, goes back at least to the Great Sphinx of some 4,500 years ago. In archaeology and
art history the appearance, and sometimes disappearance, of large or monumental sculpture
in a culture is regarded as of great significance, though tracing the emergence is often
complicated by the presumed existence of sculpture in wood and other perishable materials
of which no record remains;[3] thetotem pole is an example of a tradition of monumental
sculpture in wood that would leave no traces for archaeology. The ability to summon the
resources to create monumental sculpture, by transporting usually very heavy materials and
arranging for the payment of what are usually regarded as full-time sculptors, is considered a
mark of a relatively advanced culture in terms of social organization. Recent unexpected
discoveries of ancient Chinese bronze age figures at Sanxingdui, some more than twice
human size, have disturbed many ideas held about early Chinese civilization, since only
much smaller bronzes were previously known.[4] Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such
as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though
producing very sophisticated figurines and seals. The Mississippian culture seems to have
been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures,
such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, seem to have devoted enormous
resources to very large-scale monumental sculpture from a very early stage.

Medal of John VIII Palaeologus, c. 1435, by Pisanello, the first portrait medal, a medium essentially
made for collecting.

The collecting of sculpture, including that of earlier periods, goes back some 2,000 years in
Greece, China and Mesoamerica, and many collections were available on semi-public

display long before the modern museum was invented. From the 20th century the relatively
restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects
and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is
made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, and the ability to transport and store
the increasingly large works is a factor in their construction. Small decorative figurines, most
often in ceramics, are as popular today (though strangely neglected
by modern and Contemporary art) as they were in the Rococo, or in ancient Greece
when Tanagra figurines were a major industry, or in East Asian and Pre-Columbian art. Small
sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud
ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb ofTutankhamun.
Portrait sculpture began in Egypt, where the Narmer Palette shows a ruler of the 32nd
century BCE, and Mesopotamia, where we have 27 survivingstatues of Gudea, who
ruled Lagash c. 2144 2124 BCE. In ancient Greece and Rome, the erection of a portrait
statue in a public place was almost the highest mark of honour, and the ambition of the elite,
who might also be depicted on a coin.[5] In other cultures such as Egypt and the Near East
public statues were almost exclusively the preserve of the ruler, with other wealthy people
only being portrayed in their tombs. Rulers are typically the only people given portraits in PreColumbian cultures, beginning with the Olmec colossal heads of about 3,000 years ago. East
Asian portrait sculpture was entirely religious, with leading clergy being commemorated with
statues, especially the founders of monasteries, but not rulers, or ancestors. The
Mediterranean tradition revived, initially only for tomb effigies and coins, in the Middle Ages,
but expanded greatly in the Renaissance, which invented new forms such as the personal
portrait medal.
Animals are, with the human figure, the earliest subject for sculpture, and have always been
popular, sometimes realistic, but often imaginary monsters; in China animals and monsters
are almost the only traditional subjects for stone sculpture outside tombs and temples. The
kingdom of plants is important only in jewellery and decorative reliefs, but these form almost
all the large sculpture of Byzantine art and Islamic art, and are very important in most
Eurasian traditions, where motifs such as the palmette and vine scroll have passed east and
west for over two millennia.
One form of sculpture found in many prehistoric cultures around the world is specially
enlarged versions of ordinary tools, weapons or vessels created in impractical precious
materials, for either some form of ceremonial use or display or as offerings. Jade or other
types of greenstone were used in China, Olmec Mexico, and Neolithic Europe, and in early
Mesopotamia large pottery shapes were produced in stone. Bronze was used in Europe and
China for large axes and blades, like the Oxborough Dirk.

Materials and techniques[edit]