I.

Introduction

Sculpture (Latin, sculpere, “to carve”), the art of creating representational or abstract shapes, either in the round as free-standing sculpture or in relief sculpture. Usage, if not logic, tends to restrict the term today to objects considered to have some artistic merit so that shop dummies and even waxworks are generally excluded. Distinction is usually made between the sculpture and the “statue”, the latter term being normally confined to figures, life-size or over, in a public place.

II.

Materials and Techniques

Sculpture can be made from almost any organic or inorganic substance. The processes specific to making sculpture date from antiquity and, up to the 20th century, underwent only minor variations. These processes can be classified according to materials—stone, metal, clay, and wood; the methods used are carving, modelling, and casting. In the 20th century the means available to the sculptor were extended by new techniques, such as welding and assemblage, and by new materials such as fibreglass and plastic.

Although sculpture has been popular with private buyers, its permanence and resilience have made it especially suitable as an art of public statement. Sculpture that we see today as independent work in museums was often made for an architectural context, for instance the Classical Greek carvings in the British Museum now sometimes known as the Elgin Marbles, which originally decorated the Athenian temple, the Parthenon (see Acropolis).

A.

Carving

A procedure dating from prehistoric times, carving is a time-consuming and painstaking process in which the artist subtracts, or cuts away, superfluous material until the desired form is reached. The material is usually hard and frequently weighty; generally, the design is compact and is governed by the nature of the material. For example, the narrow dimensions of the marble block used by Michelangelo to carve his David (1501-1504, Accademia, Florence) strongly affected the pose and restricted the figure's outward movement into space.

Various tools are used, depending on the material to be carved and the state to which the work has progressed. In the case of stone, the rough first cutting to achieve the general shape may be performed by an artisan assistant using sharp tools; then the sculptor continues the work of cutting and chiselling. As work progresses, less penetrating tools are used, such as a bow drill and a rasp; finishing touches are carried out with fine rasps; then by rubbing with pumice or sand, and—if a great degree of smoothness is desired—by adding a transparent patina, made with an oil or wax base.

Just as the work of the painter is frequently dependent on preliminary drawings so the process of carving is often preceded by the making of models in wax or plaster. In the 19th century it was common to work from plaster to stone by means of a mechanical device known as a pointing machine. Much of the manual work could be done by studio assistants and it was possible to make enlargements from a smaller model. When this is bypassed, as was prevalent in the 20th century, it is normal to talk of “direct carving”. Because of the unpredictability of wood it was only practical to use the pointing machine for stone carving.

B.

Modelling

Modelling consists of addition to, or building up of, form. The materials used are soft and yielding and can be easily shaped, enabling rapid execution. Thus, a sculptor can capture and record fleeting impressions in much the same way a painter does in a quick sketch. Clay or claylike substances (such as terracotta) have been used for modelling since ancient times. This must be baked or it will be too fragile to survive. Wax, which can be coloured, is another modelling material. Plaster, which can be hard or soft, can be worked by a combination of modelling and carving. Except in the case of very small pieces, a metal or wooden structure known as an armature is used for support.

C.

Casting

With careful handling and storage, as in a museum, plaster and terracotta can survive indefinitely but the rigours of its public role demand that modelled sculpture usually be cast in metal. Two methods of casting are used: the cire perdue, or lost-wax process, and sand-casting. Both methods have been used since antiquity, although the lost-wax process is more widely employed. Sand casting is an intricate process in which fine, cohesive sand, mixed with a small amount of clay, is used to produce a positive model and slightly larger negative mould of the artist's original, between which molten metal is poured and allowed to harden. Since the 1920s it has been normal to control the issue of bronze casts by means of limited editions to preserve quality, maintain rarity value, and protect artist and collector alike from unauthorized copies. Bronze casting has been used to give permanence to other fragile, three-dimensional works such as wood constructions or even carvings.

D.

Construction and Assemblage

Although traditional techniques are still employed, much 20th-century sculpture is created by construction and assemblage (see Cubism and Constructivism below). It is essentially an additive process that has its origins in collage.

E.

Free Standing and Relief

The fully free-standing sculpture usually stands on a plinth or base. It can often be viewed from different angles and it is even argued that this gives it a superiority over painting. The most common form is the single figure and the more figures that are introduced the more sculpture tends to be viewed like a painting, that is to say from a single angle. Therefore, in the case of more complex scenes, which involve a number of figures or in which figures need to be related to a background, it is usual to employ relief. This is designed to be viewed like a painting from a single angle and can employ painterly devices to give the illusion of depth. In some sculptural monuments a free-standing figure is placed on a base, which itself contains reliefs that comment on the person commemorated.

F.

Colour

Sculpture is above all the art of three-dimensional form, but colour can play a role. Sculpture can be painted, as was done by the ancient Greeks. Different colours of wax can be used. Baroque sculptors such as Gianlorenzo Bernini employed coloured marble to vivid effect. Twentieth-century sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth have tended to prefer stones with varied colours and textures to pure white marble. Bronze casts if unprotected will discolour anyway, so the process is stabilized by finishing them in different colours by a chemical procedure known as patination. Up to the late 19th century, dark browns and near blacks were favoured, but some 20th-century sculptors such as Constantin Brancusi preferred the golden sheen of natural bronze, suggesting a machine-like precision. Also popular in the 20th century has been an emerald green, a rather lurid and stylized version of the effect achieved by burying bronze in the soil for centuries. The spectator today tends to associate the sculptures of Auguste Rodin in terms of dark brown bronze casts. His contemporaries would think of them primarily as white, either as plasters or marble carvings.

III.

History

This article traces the history of Western sculpture from prehistoric times to the present day; for non-Western sculpture, see African Art and Architecture; Chinese Art and Architecture; Indian Art and Architecture; Iranian Art and Architecture; Islamic Art and Architecture; Japanese Art and Architecture; Korean Art and Architecture; Oceanian Art and Architecture; Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture.

A.

Prehistoric Sculpture

In 2007 archaeologists reported the discovery of a large figure, thought to be that of a python, carved from rock in a historically important cave in the Kalahari Desert, together with tools believed to be 70,000 years old, making it the earliest known sculpted object. In Europe the earliest known sculpted objects are cut from ivory, horn, bone, or stone, and are some 27,000 to 32,000 years old. A small ivory horse with graceful, curving lines is among the oldest of these objects; it was found in a cave in Germany. Also excavated from the cumulative debris on prehistoric cave floors are little stone female figurines carved with emphasis on the reproductive organs, the breasts, and the buttocks. These figures are thought to represent fertility goddesses and are therefore referred to as Venus figures. One such figure, the so-called Venus of Willendorf (c. 24,000-22,000 bc; Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna), with bulbous proportions although a mere 11.25 cm (4.5 in) high, was painted red. In Jericho, human skulls covered with plaster were naturalistically rendered some 9,000 years ago.

B.

Egyptian Sculpture

Among the oldest Egyptian sculptures is a piece of slate carved in low relief, known as the Palette of King Narmer (c. 3100 bc, Egyptian Museum, Cairo). It portrays the victory of Upper over Lower Egypt, depicting kings, armies, servants, and various animals. The kings (pharaohs) were also commemorated in magnificent life-size statues, set in funerary temples and tombs (see Egyptian Art and Architecture). Not true portraits, these sculptures are idealized representations, with almost standardized features and a fixed gaze, and always depicted in a frontal pose. Strong geometric emphasis was given to the body, with the shoulders and chest plane resembling an inverted triangle, as in a carved diorite sculpture (c. 2530 bc, Egyptian Museum) of the pharaoh Khafre. During the reign of Akhenaton, greater naturalism was attained, as seen in the exquisite painted limestone portrait bust (c. 1365 bc, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) of his queen Nefertiti.

C.

Mesopotamian Sculpture

Mesopotamian art is the product of several civilizations: Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian (see Mesopotamian Art and Architecture). About 2600 bc the Sumerians were carving small marble deities noted for their wide, staring eyes. Other details—hair, facial expression, body, and clothing—were schematically treated with little attention paid to achieving a likeness. These qualities remained characteristic of later Mesopotamian sculpture. The Mesopotamians were also fond of portraying animals and did so with great skill, as can be seen on palace gates and reliefs on walls during the Assyrian period (1000-612 bc; examples in British Museum, London, and Metropolitan Museum, New York).

D.

Aegean and Greek Sculpture

Aegean art includes Minoan sculpture, such as terracotta and ivory statuettes of goddesses, and Mycenaean works, among which are small carved ivory deities. The Greeks, masters of stone carving and bronze casting, created some of the greatest sculpture known. Between the 7th and 1st centuries bc, working on a monumental scale, they brought to perfection the depiction of the human form. In the earliest period, the Archaic, figures appeared rigid and bodies were schematized along geometric lines, as in Egyptian art. By the Classical period, in the 5th and 4th centuries bc, however, naturalism was attained; figures were well proportioned and shown in movement, although faces remained immobile. Gods and athletes were favourite subjects during this period and for the first time we know sculptors by name such as Phidias, who was responsible for the architectural sculpture made for the Parthenon in Athens. Praxiteles is credited with being the first Greek sculptor to have depicted the female nude. During the Hellenistic period (4th-1st century bc), works became increasingly expressive, as reflected in facial features and complicated poses. The Nike of Samothráki, or Winged Victory (c. 190 bc, Louvre, Paris), is a highly dramatic masterpiece from this time. See Aegean Civilization; Greek Art and Architecture.

E.

Etruscan and Roman Sculpture

The Etruscans, who inhabited the area of Italy between Florence and Rome from the 8th to the 3rd century bc, made life-size terracotta sculptures portraying gods; they also depicted themselves, in reclining positions, on the lids of terracotta sarcophagi (coffins). Superb bronze sculptures were also created, such as the She-Wolf (c. 500 bc, Museo Capitolino, Rome), which became the symbol of Rome.

The Romans were avid collectors and imitators of Greek sculpture, and modern historians are indebted to their copies for knowledge of lost Greek originals. Their distinctive contribution to the art of sculpture was realistic portraiture, in which they recorded even the homeliest facial details. The Romans' sense of the importance of historic events was expressed in free-standing and in relief sculpture; commemorative monuments in Rome include the Arch of Titus (c. ad 81), Trajan’s Column (c. 106-113), and the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (c. 175). The latter became the prototype for most later equestrian sculptures. See Etruscan Civilization: Art and Architecture; Roman Art and Architecture.

F.

Early Christian Sculpture

Surviving examples of Early Christian sculpture date from the 4th century. These works no longer corresponded to the classical ideal of beauty although there is no clear stylistic divide with other late Roman sculpture. The carved marble sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (c. ad 359, Grotte Vaticane, Rome) portrays ten biblical scenes; its figures are oddly proportioned, wearing drapery that falls in rather monotonous folds. This style—sometimes called Late Antique—is perhaps the result of influences from invading Germanic tribes and may be the work of less skilled artists; in general, as the centuries passed, the biblical prohibition of graven images diminished the role of sculpture. Instead of life-size statuary, small-scale sculptures were made: portable ivory altarpieces, diptychs (two panels of carved ivory hinged together), or small enamelled caskets in the Byzantine style. The latter are exemplified by the Limburg Reliquary (Limburg an der Lahn, Germany), a 10th-century container made of silver gilt, jewels, and enamel. Sculpture remained an art of surface ornament until later in the Middle Ages. See Byzantine Art and Architecture; Early Christian Art and Architecture.

G.

Scandinavian and Carolingian Sculpture

During the early Middle Ages in northern Europe, particularly from the 9th to the 12th century, Scandinavian artisans were masters of metalwork and woodcarving. The prow posts and sternposts of Viking ships, sleds, and other objects of daily use were decorated with figures of animals that were transformed into semiabstract linear patterns. The Norwegian stave churches (11th and 12th centuries) are profusely decorated in carved wood of the same design. This style, combining organic and abstract shapes, was also important in Celtic-Germanic art (see Celtic Art), as seen in an 8th-century relief (National Museum of Ireland, Dublin) displaying a primitive crucifixion scene.

Little sculpture has survived from the Carolingian period, despite the great interest that Charlemagne took in the arts and his revival of classicism. A 9th-century bronze statuette depicting him on a horse, with his crown, sword, and imperial globe, demonstrates a knowledge of Roman sculpture. A bejewelled gold book cover for the Lindau Gospels depicting the crucifixion (c. 870, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York) also shows Classical rather than Celtic-Germanic influences.

H.

Ottonian Sculpture

In contrast to the lack of extant pieces from the Carolingian period, some impressive sculpture remains from the Ottonian period, dating from the mid-10th to the early 11th century in Germany. The Gero Crucifix (Cologne Cathedral), life-sized and carved in wood, powerfully portrays Christ's suffering. Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim commissioned a pair of bronze doors (c. 1015, Hildesheim Cathedral, Germany) with 16 richly sculptured panels depicting the Fall of Man and the Redemption, expressionistically rendered in high relief. Bernward may have derived his inspiration for these doors from his trip to Rome; he also ordered a large bronze columnar candlestick (early 11th century, Hildesheim Cathedral) carved with scenes arranged in bands, a scheme similar to that on Trajan's Column in Rome.

I.

Romanesque Sculpture

The revival of monumental stone sculpture, an art that had virtually disappeared with the ancients, took place in the Romanesque period, during the 11th and 12th centuries. Churches in southern France display on their exteriors an abundance of sculpture, meant to attract and to instruct the worshipper. Attached to the stonework rather than free-standing, the carved image becomes an integral part of the architecture, conforming in design to the area where it was placed—portal, tympanum, or jamb. A favourite subject was the Last Judgement, with angels and demons vividly portrayed. Different styles are apparent: on some churches, such as those at Moissac, Autun, or Vézelay, a nervous intensity is conveyed; on others, such as those at Toulouse or Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, serene classicism is evident. See Romanesque Art and Architecture.

J.

Gothic Sculpture

In the Gothic period, remarkable sculpture was produced in France, Germany, and Italy. As in Romanesque times, much of it was made in conjunction with church architecture, although sculptured figures are also found on tombs, pulpits, and other church furnishings. The sculpture of the 13th and early 14th centuries demonstrated the move to naturalism that also marked the painting of the period.

J.1.

France

Chartres Cathedral exemplifies the evolution of the Gothic style, which can be traced in viewing its portals. Its west entrance, the earliest, built in the mid-12th century, displays rigid, columnar figures with schematic drapery and similar, almost undifferentiated facial expressions; the later portals, on the north and south transepts, show greater differentiation of personality and costume, and even convey movement by means of a Gothic S-curve given to the axis of the body. Chartres Cathedral's sculpture, in addition, is a virtual encyclopedia of medieval knowledge; beyond the biblical narratives and depictions of various saints are portrayed astrology, the labours of the months, the liberal arts, and the virtues and vices. Many French Gothic cathedrals have similar sculptural programmes, and, as at Chartres, the identity of the sculptors is unknown. By contrast, the Flemish sculptor who worked in Dijon for the Duke of Burgundy is known to have been one Claus Sluter. Among his works is the polychrome stone Well of Moses (1395-1403, Chartreuse de Champmol, Dijon), showing Moses and several other prophets; it is unique for the manner in which realistic details of anatomy, clothing textures, and distinct personalities are rendered. Also known is the name of one of the first women sculptors to be encountered in the history of Western art—Sabina von Steinbach—who, in the 13th century, assisted her father, the builder of Strasbourg Cathedral. She was responsible for the statues personifying the Church and the Synagogue, which are located near the south portals of the cathedral.

J.2.

Germany

In Germany, Gothic sculpture frequently shows an emotional intensity and characteristic German Expressionism. Pathos is conveyed in the 13th-century choir-screen carvings, at Naumburg Cathedral, of the Crucifixion and the kiss of Judas. Medieval passion plays were a source of inspiration to many of the Gothic sculptors of northern Europe. The greater humanization and realism that marked Gothic sculpture generally is exemplified by the figure of Uta (c. 1250, Naumburg Cathedral), who draws up her cloak as protection from the cold. The Bamberg Rider (c. 1240, Bamberg Cathedral) is the first great equestrian statue in Western art since antiquity.

J.3.

Italy

Not surprisingly, given that artists working in Italy were acquainted with ancient Roman works, such as sarcophagi, Classical tendencies are found in the Italian Gothic style. In the mid-13th century, Nicola Pisano, for example, created a marble pulpit—with a strong classical flavour in its architectural elements and sculptured panels—for the baptistery of Pisa Cathedral.

K.

Italian Renaissance Sculpture

At the beginning of the 15th century in Italy, both scholars and artists began to take a strong interest in the Classical past; this led to the Renaissance—the rebirth of classical culture (see Renaissance Art and Architecture).

Lorenzo Ghiberti cast two sets of bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery; both demonstrate his knowledge of ancient sculpture. The second set, known as the Gates of Paradise (1425-1450), shows, in addition, his mastery of the laws of perspective, which had only recently been mathematically codified. The demand was also for large-scale, free-standing statues, and Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco, and Donatello created monumental figures of saints, which were placed in the wall niches of Or San Michele—the oratory of the guilds—in Florence.

Donatello was the greatest sculptor of the early Renaissance; his works demonstrate that he was not only a master stonecutter, but also possessed a profound understanding of human psychology. For example, the statue of St George (c. 1415-1416, that he made for Or San Michele, Bargello, Florence) is represented sheathed in armour, but the sensitive face betrays an element of vulnerability. Most astonishing is Donatello's innovative Mary Magdalen (1454-1455, Florence Baptistery), a carved wood statue, painted in polychrome and gilt. Customarily portrayed as a beautiful young woman with lovely long hair, this Magdalen is—in Donatello's startling and revolutionary work—a semi-toothless, emaciated old woman with tangled hair reaching almost to her feet.

Outside Florence, the most noteworthy sculptor of the early Renaissance was Jacopo della Quercia, of Siena. His handling of the nude in marble relief panels—Creation of Adam, Temptation, and Expulsion from Eden (1425-1438)—for the main portal of San Petronio in Bologna shows an awareness of ancient art. Adam has an idealized, muscular body, like the Greek statues of gods and athletes; Eve's body and pose are based on the type known as the Venus pudica, or modest Venus.

The towering genius in sculpture, not only during the 16th century in Italy but perhaps of all time, is Michelangelo. His mastery manifested itself early, for he was only in his 20s when he carved the Pietà (1498-1499, St Peter's Basilica, Rome) and the heroic David, the first monumental sculptures of the High Renaissance. For the tomb of Pope Julius II, a project never completed, Michelangelo created the majestic Moses (c. 1515, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome) and other highly expressive individual figures. During the 1520s the style of his sculpture changed, as illustrated by the Medici Tombs (1519-1534) in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence. Whereas Michelangelo's earlier nude sculpture displays harmonious proportions, the reclining allegorical figures on the tombs, representing the four times of day, show bodily distortions and complexities of pose indicating his departure from High Renaissance ideals. His later works, such as the Pietà (c. 1554-1564, Castello Sforzesco, Milan), are also anticlassical. Thus, Michelangelo's later sculpture and the works of other 16th-century artists show that new modes were evolving. It is with Michelangelo that the idea of the sculptor as someone engaged in a heroic conflict with the material is established. Many of his works such as his final Pietà (c. 1552-1564, Castello Sforzesco, Milan) were left unfinished and bear the marks of the artist’s struggle to free the figure from the stone.

L.

Mannerist Sculpture

Mannerism, which made a virtue of complexity, distortion, and artifice, grew out of Late Renaissance style.

L.1.

Italy

Italian Mannerist sculptors include Benvenuto Cellini, Francesco Primaticcio, and Giambologna. Cellini is widely known for an elegant gold and enamel salt cellar (1539-1543, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), displaying graceful nude figures with elongated proportions, made for Francis I of France. Also working for the French court, among a group of artists known as the Fontainebleau School, was Primaticcio, whose elaborate stucco sculptures (c. 1540s) decorate major rooms in the Palace of Fontainebleau. Giambologna, who came originally from France, was the major sculptor working in Florence in the late 16th century. Among his works is Rape of the Sabine Women (1583, Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence), an over-life-size marble group, interesting from all angles. Consisting of three figures in twisting poses, spiralling upwards, it demonstrates the Mannerist ideal of drama and complexity of form.

L.2.

France

In northern Europe, the finest sculptors working in France during the 16th century were influenced by the Mannerism of the Fontainebleau School. Jean Goujon did some tomb sculpture, but best known are his reliefs depicting gracefully draped water nymphs for the Fountain of the Innocent (1548-1549, Louvre). Germain Pilon also executed tomb sculpture; most impressive for its realism and technical skill is his tomb figure of Valentine Balbiani (c. 1581; Louvre), in which a delicately carved marble relief portrays the decaying corpse.

M.

Baroque and Rococo Sculpture

The Baroque style, which dominated the 17th century, had its origins in Rome and is characterized by dynamic intensity. After the rise of free-standing sculpture during the Renaissance, the Baroque was again concerned with the close relationship to architecture, exploiting rhetorical—even theatrical—effects to impress the spectator. The more delicate, decorative idiom characteristic of the early part of the 18th century and originating in France, is known as Rococo style.

M.1.

Italy

No artist exemplified the powerful combination of sculpture, painting, and architecture better than Gianlorenzo Bernini. His works are highly dramatic, and their depth of emotional expression suited the intense spirit of the Counter-Reformation. A strong interplay of light, shadow, and movement characterizes all of Bernini's works. His Apollo and Daphne (1622-1624, Galleria Borghese, Rome) shows his technical virtuosity in handling marble, which stands equally for soft flesh and hard wood. It was crucial to his aesthetic to stretch the potential of the material as far as it would go, to work against the associations of marble with stasis and coldness. This was to damage his reputation among later sculptors who held to the ideal of “truth to material”. David (1623-1624, Galleria Borghese), one of his early works, is, in sharp contrast to Michelangelo's restrained, classical representation of David, a self-contained contemplative figure, shown before his encounter with Goliath. Bernini's figure is frozen in motion, his attention fixed on the unseen adversary, his body twisting to throw the shot.

Many of Bernini's largest sculptures are in St Peter's Basilica, the colonnaded piazza of which he also designed; these works include the gigantic baldachin, or canopy (1624-1633), over the high altar, the enormous Cathedra Petri (Chair of St Peter, 1657-1666), several monumental statues of saints, and two papal tombs. One of his most celebrated creations, however, is the ornate Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, with its spectacular Ecstasy of St Teresa (1645-1652). Bernini united the sensual with the spiritual experience in an unprecedented manner in this, his most theatrical work. His enormous output also includes portrait busts and several superb sculptured fountains in Rome, including the famous Fountain of the Four Rivers (1648-1651) in the Piazza Navona.

Bernini’s achievement has tended to obscure those of his contemporaries. The Flemish-born François Duquesnoy showed in works like Santa Susanna (1629-1633, Santa Maria di Loreto, Rome) how a more restrained classical manner co-existed with the Baroque.

M.2.

France and Germany

In France, the leading Baroque sculptors were François Girardon, who made much garden sculpture at the Palace of Versailles, and Antoine Coysevox and Pierre Puget, both of whom were influenced to some extent by Bernini. Puget's most notable sculptures are a portal for the Hôtel de Ville (1656) in Toulon and the marble Milo of Crotona (1671-1683, Louvre), whose contrapposto pose and intense emotionalism exemplify the Baroque aesthetic. Puget in turn inspired the 18th-century Rococo French sculptors Étienne Maurice Falconet, Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, and Clodion (Claude Michel).

The theatrical aspects of the Rococo were best exemplified in Germany by the colourful works of the brothers Egid Quirin Asam and Cosmas Damian Asam, who were painters and architects as well as sculptors. The ornate decoration for the Church of St John Nepomuk (1733-1746) in Munich is their best-known work.

M.3.

Britain

In Britain, this was the great age of the church monument. Nicholas Stone’s memorial to John Donne (1631, St Paul’s Cathedral, London) depicted the poet and preacher wrapped in his winding sheet. The French sculptor Louis François Roubiliac brought a Rococo flair to elaborate allegorical tombs such as the monument to Joseph and Lady Elizabeth Nightingale (1761, Westminster Abbey, London), in which the husband vainly attempts to deflect the spear of death.

N.

Neo-Classical Sculpture

During the latter half of the 18th century, a revival of classicism occurred. Neo-Classical Style derived inspiration from the archaeological excavations then taking place in Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean area. Also important was an influential essay written by the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, praising ancient Greek sculpture. A favourite ancient work during the 18th century was the Apollo Belvedere (Roman copy of a Greek original, late 4th century bc, Vatican Museums, Rome), which Antonio Canova adapted in his marble Perseus with Medusa's Head (1801, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Canova also turned to the ancients for his sculpture of Napoleon's sister, Maria Paulina Borghese as Venus Victrix (1805-1807, Galleria Borghese).

Bertel Thorvaldsen, a Danish sculptor living in Rome, was so famous in his day for his works inspired by the Antique that a special museum was built (begun 1839) in Copenhagen as a memorial to him. Thorvaldsen's contact with Canova is evident in his first deliberately classicist work, Jason (1803 Thorvaldsen's Museum, Copenhagen), based on the Roman copy of the ancient Greek Doryphoros (5th century bc, Museo Nazionale, Naples). His other sculptures were influenced by his restoration of the pediment marbles of the Late Archaic Greek Temple of Aphaia on the island of Aegina. Although his name is not well known beyond the confines of his native Sweden, Johan Tobias Sergel was an excellent late 18th-century sculptor, synthesizing Neo-Classical subject matter with Baroque dynamism, as in Faun (1770-1774) and Mars and Venus (1804), both in the National Museum, Stockholm.

The English artist John Flaxman is perhaps best remembered for his delicately modelled classical reliefs that ornament Wedgwood pottery; he also executed sepulchral monuments. His fine line drawings illustrating the classic works of Homer, Aeschylus, Hesiod, and Dante had a greater impact on European art, however, than his sculpture.

The French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon incorporated some classical concepts in his full-length marble statue of George Washington (1788-1792, State Capitol, Richmond, Virginia) and in Diana (1777, Louvre). His finest works, however, are portrait busts whose liveliness and naturalism go beyond the confines of classicism.

O.

Romantic Sculpture

Romanticism was a reaction against the perceived emotional coldness and dependence on antique models of Neo-Classicism. In France, leading Romantic sculptors were François Rude, Antoine Louis Barye, and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Rude is best known for his stirring monumental sculptures on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, especially the Departure of the Volunteers in 1792—also called La Marseillaise—executed in 1833-1836. A great winged figure personifying Liberty is shown above a group of men: she is rushing forwards, screaming, urging them on to battle. Barye was perhaps the finest animal sculptor since antiquity. His meticulously rendered bronzes have a vitality suggesting wild animals observed in their native habitats but in actuality resulting from Barye's frequent visits to the Paris zoo. The fascination with the wildness of nature is a Romantic trait shared with painters such as Eugène Delacroix. Carpeaux's famous group, La Danse (1867-1869), graces the façade of the Paris Opéra. The vivaciousness of the figures and the effect of rippling light and shadow created by the modelling of their surfaces have a strong affinity with Rococo art.

Auguste Rodin represented both the culmination of Romantic sculpture and the origins of the modern. He took further than any previous sculptor the Romantic cult of the fragmentary and the provisional. Figures such as Iris (c. 1890-1891, casts in Musée Rodin, Paris and Kunsthaus, Zurich) use truncated limbs and fractured surfaces to give a sense of dynamism and movement. The Burghers of Calais (1886, Calais) proposed a democratic concept of heroism appropriate to the values of the French Republic by abolishing the plinth and placing the martyrs on the same level as the public. His vividly expressive modelled surfaces point towards modernist sculpture’s enjoyment of materials for their own sake, but in his attitude to carving Rodin remained a man of the 19th century, leaving the execution of his marbles to skilled assistants and the pointing machine.

The late 19th century also saw an expansion of the subject-matter of sculpture to encompass the working class. Aimé-Jules Dalou, Rodin’s great rival in France as a public sculptor, worked on a never-completed Monument to Labour (fragments in Petit Palais, Paris), Hamo Thornycroft in Britain made The Mower (1884, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), frankly invoking Italian Renaissance sculpture. The Belgian Constantin Meunier created heroic figures from miners and dockers.

Rodin's pupil and assistant, Antoine Bourdelle, was also a superb sculptor of the human figure, conveying a feeling of power and massiveness in his expressionistic bronzes, as in the Great Warrior of Montauban (1888, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.).

In the United States, William Rimmer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Daniel Chester French shared a romantic approach in their allegorical sculptures. Rimmer's Dying Centaur (1871, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Saint-Gauden's Adams Memorial (1886-1891, Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C.), and French's The Angel of Death and the Sculptor (1891-1892, Forest Hills Cemetery, Roxbury, Massachusetts) are moving works, demonstrating the American Romantic artists' technical excellence.

The late 19th century was also notable for experimentation in materials. Camille Claudel, a pupil and assistant of Rodin whose career was tragically curtailed by mental illness, used coloured stone such as onyx. In Britain, the “New Sculptors” such as Alfred Gilbert and George Frampton cultivated an almost jewel-like quality.

P.

Sculpture Since 1900

As in painting, much early 20th-century sculpture developed towards abstraction and against literal representation. Artists explored new materials and techniques as well as seeking new ways to represent modern life. In the early years of the 21st century it is at least open to question as to how far sculpture in terms of the definitions supplied at the beginning of the article survives as a discrete independent category, except in relatively conservative forms, as three-dimensional art engages with installation and the object.

P.1.

Public Sculpture

The years around the turn of the 19th and 20th century represented an apogee of urban public sculpture in Europe. The middle class used public sculpture to celebrate its heroes—the politicians, writers, artists, and soldiers. In France, the phenomenon was eventually mocked as “statuemania”. This development meant that at the end of the World War I there was a solid professional base for the production of memorials. While these often employed rather conventional symbolism, some artists like Sargeant Jagger and Goscombe John were able to combine monumentality with a vivid presentation of the realities of the conflict.

Not surprisingly public sculpture has been particularly frequently in the firing line in cases when there has been public controversy over modern art. Works in London by Jacob Epstein between the two world wars, such as the Hudson Memorial (1925) in Hyde Park, were especially vulnerable on the grounds of alleged departures from classical standards of beauty.

Public sculpture has traditionally been an art form that lends itself to political rhetoric. This was dramatically demonstrated at the Paris 1937 International Exhibition when, just two years before the outbreak of the World War II, a group of Soviet heroic workers waving a hammer and sickle by Vera Mukhina and one from Nazi Germany, a muscular collection of idealized Nordic types by Josef Thorak, confronted each other. In the 1990s there was a political rhetoric in the destruction of such sculpture in the former Soviet block. The Angel of the North (1998) by Antony Gormley, in Gateshead, has already become a much-loved landmark perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, its lack of any specific political reference. In the Bosnian city of Mostar in 2005, still bitterly divided on religious and ethnic grounds after civil war, some kind of unity was sought in the erection of a statue not of a contentious local figure but of the kung fu actor Bruce Lee.

P.2.

Carving

Many early 20th-century sculptors emphatically rejected the pointing machine in favour of direct carving to which a distinct moral value was frequently attached. For the Romanian Constantin Brancusi the choice of material and the meaning of the sculpture were intimately combined. This led him to use a radical simplification of form, which has had an enormous impact on subsequent sculpture. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, a French sculptor working in London before the World War I, wrote that “every stroke of the hammer is a physical and mental effort”. Eric Gill related carving to a religiously inspired attempt to revive a craft tradition and claimed to see no distinction between the carving of figures and of letters. Henry Moore spoke of the importance of “truth to material”. Barbara Hepworth maintained that her sculptures were always conceived for a particular material and preferred hand work to power tools because “it reveals the quality of thought right down to the final stages”.

With many sculptors the preference for carving was linked with the rediscovery of sculpture that rejected the slick polish of Western academic art, especially as practised on an almost industrial level in the 19th century. Brancusi looked towards traditional Romanian peasant woodcarving; Picasso admired African sculpture, while Moore took inspiration from the art of ancient Mexico. At the same time, some early 20th-century French sculptors such as Joseph Bernard took a distinctly nationalist interest in the stone carving of the great medieval cathedrals.

P.3.

Cubism and Constructivism

Unlike carving and modelling, construction is a process distinct to modernist sculpture. Its initial roots were in Cubism, especially collage. From 1912 onward, Picasso made small-scale pieces in cardboard and wood. For the first time the essence of sculpture lay in plane surfaces rather than volume. Russian-born Jacques Lipchitz, working in Paris, used traditional techniques of carving and modelling, but was influenced by this stylistic approach. The Paris-based Ukrainian Alexander Archipenko and the Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni both made structures out of metal, glass, and wood to present a multicoloured vision of the flux of contemporary life.

The Russian Vladimir Tatlin took the idea further in his 1915 Corner Reliefs, which were totally abstract constructions. His compatriot Naum Gabo used plastics and other industrial materials in geometric works as did the British Constructivists of the 1950s such as Kenneth and Mary Martin.

Picasso later worked in constructed metal sculpture on a large scale in works such as Woman in a Garden (1930-1931, Picasso Museum, Paris). He was aided technically by the metalworking skills of Julio González, who went on to make his own sculptures in forged and welded iron.

This kind of openwork metal sculpture, exploiting industrial techniques, was further developed by the American David Smith. Works such as La Rêve (c. 1934, Musée National d'Art Modern, Paris) by González or Hudson River Landscape (1951, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) by Smith can be thought of as a kind of “drawing in space”.

The British sculptor Anthony Caro was much influenced by Smith. From 1960 onward he worked on large-scale sculpture in welded and bolted metal, initially painted but later with a rusted finish. These were totally abstract and were not displayed like a traditional sculpture on a plinth or base, but directly on the floor. Caro was highly influential as a teacher. His students, such as Phillip King and William Tucker, made colourful abstract sculpture in impersonal industrial materials such as plastic and fibreglass, which emphatically rejected the “truth to material” ideal of Moore and Hepworth.

Minimalist sculpture again uses industrial materials and techniques as in the hollow metal boxes of Donald Judd and Tony Smith or the sculpture of Carl Andre in which basic components such as fire bricks in Equivalent VIII (1966, Tate Modern, London), are laid on the floor in a simple geometric form. Eva Hesse, sometimes described as a Post-Minimalist, used not rigid materials but string and latex.

Also within the Constructivist tradition has been the introduction of actual movement. Gabo and Archipenko both experimented with this, but the first artist to do this consistently was the American Alexander Calder in his mobiles. These were made from sheets of cut metal joined by wires in such a way that they would respond to gentle air currents. Kinetic Art, a tendency identified in the 1960s, usually employed electrical power as in the work of Takis in which objects swayed or quivered in space under the effect of magnetism.

P.4.

The Metamorphosis of the Figure

The human figure has always been central to sculpture and during the 20th century it was subjected to the same transformations (or less kindly distortions) as in painting. Early in the 20th century the French sculptor of Italian birth Medardo Rosso attempted to reproduce sculpturally the atmospheric effects of Impressionist painting by attacking the coherence of structure and surface. Sometimes, as in the work of relatively traditional artists such as Aristide Maillol in Mediterranean (1905, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and Frank Dobson, this was for the sake of simplification and classic calm after the emotional turbulence of Rodin and the Romantics. Expressionist sculptors such as Ernst Barlach and Wilhelm Lehmbruck sought the maximum emotional impact. More radical were the twisting and liberties with scale for decorative and expressive purpose in some of the figure sculpture of Henri Matisse and Henri Laurens.

Some sculptors sought analogies between one form and another, as seen in Horse (1914, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris) of Raymond Duchamp-Villon (animal and motor car) or female figure and the landscape in much of Henry Moore’s work, especially his reclining figures. In works such as His Majesty the Wheel (1958-1959) Eduardo Paolozzi endowed the figure with an aura of urban decay. The bronzes of Germaine Richier fused human and insect.

P.5.

The Sculptural Object

It was the Dada Marcel Duchamp who in New York in 1917 first exhibited (or attempted to exhibit) an industrial object as though it were a piece of sculpture, with Fountain, an upturned urinal. The Surrealists, never respectful of artistic skill for its own sake, saw no essential distinction between the art of sculpture—as practised by the academically trained Surrealist sculptor Alberto Giacometti as in Palace at 4 a.m. (1932-1933, Museum of Modern Art, New York)—and objects they might put together or even find in the Paris flea market.

After World War II many artists looked back to the Dada object. In the United States Jasper Johns cast objects such as light bulbs and beer cans in bronze. The French sculptor Arman produced accumulations of everyday objects.

Q.

Questioning the Object

The necessity for the sculptural object was open to question or satire. In 1958 in Paris Yves Klein exhibited Le Vide, a completely empty gallery space. The German artist Joseph Beuys saw sculpture as a process rather than an object; furthermore, it was a process that could be used to transform the whole of society along more co-operative and environmentally sound lines. He frequently employed material such as fat and felt, which lacked the stability of traditional media and regarded political agitation as a form of sculpture. In the late 1960s conceptual artists such as Joseph Kossuth and the Art Language group were to open to question the whole necessity for art to have an object at all. The result was that sculptors who, only a few years previously, had appeared as radical innovators, now seemed traditionalists. Steam (as used, for example, by Robert Morris) and sand (as found in the work of Barry Flanagan, for example) could now become sculptural materials, as could miming to an old record (Gilbert and George, The Singing Sculpture, 1970). In the arte povera of Jannis Kounellis the sculptural object could even include living creatures such as horses or a dancer. Land Art such as the Spiral Jetty (1973) of Robert Smithson could for most only be experienced through film and photography.

It could certainly be proposed that much recent work that happens to be in three dimensions is more concerned with the production of powerful and memorable images or intriguing ideas than the creation of objects. Whether such works as the preserved shark of Damien Hirst, the cast of the interior of a house by Rachel Whiteread, or Two Eggs and a Kebab (1992, private collection, London) by Sarah Lucas qualify as sculpture is a fine point of definition and almost certainly not the most interesting question about them.

Additional material by John Glaves-Smith.