Representational sculpture
Sculpture in the round is much more restricted than relief in the range of its subject matter. The representation of, say, a battle scene or a cavalcade in the round would require a space that corresponded in scale in every direction with that occupied by an actual battle or cavalcade. No such problems arise in relief because the treatment of scale and relations in depth is to some extent notional, or theoretical, like that of pictures. Then again, because a relief is attached to a background, problems of weight and physical balance and support do not arise. Figures can be represented as floating in space and can be arranged vertically as well as horizontally. Thus, in general, sculpture in the round is concerned with single figures and limited groups, while reliefs deal with more complex “pictorial” subjects involving crowds, landscape, architectural backgrounds, and so on.
The human figure
The principal subject of sculpture has always been the human figure. Next in importance in historical work are animals and fantastic creatures based on human and animal forms. Other subjects—for example, landscape, plants, still life, and architecture—have served primarily as accessories to figure sculpture, not as subjects in their own right, except as decorative elements within architecture or as precious carved witticisms such as those of the British wood-carver Grinling Gibbons. The overwhelming predominance of the human figure is due: first, to its immense emotional importance as an object of desire, love, fear, respect, and, in the case of anthropomorphic gods, worship; and, second, to its inexhaustible subtlety and variety of form and expression. The nude or almost nude figure played a prominent role in Egyptian, Indian, Greek, and African sculpture, while in medieval European and ancient Chinese sculpture the figure is almost invariably clothed. The interplay of the linear and modeled forms of free draperies with the solid volumes of the human body was of great interest to Classical sculptors and later became one of the principal themes of Renaissance and post-Renaissance sculpture. The human figure continues to be of central importance in modern sculpture in spite of the growth of nonfigurative art; but the optimistic, idealized, or naturalistic images of man prevalent in previous ages have been largely replaced by images of despair, horror, deformation, and satire.
Devotional images and narrative sculpture
The production of devotional images has been one of the sculptor’s main tasks, and many of the world’s greatest sculptures are of this kind. They include images of Buddha and the Hindu gods; of Christ, the Virgin, and the Christian saints; of Athena, Aphrodite, Zeus, and other Greek gods; and of all the various gods, spirits, and mythical beings of Rome, the ancient Near East, pre-Columbian America, Black Africa, and the Pacific Islands.
Closely connected with devotional images are all of the commemorative narrative sculptures in which legends, heroic deeds, and religious stories are depicted for the delight and instruction of peoples who lived when books and literacy were rare. The Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian traditions are especially rich in narrative sculpture. Stories of the incarnations of Buddha—Jataka—and of the Hindu gods abounded in the temple sculpture of India and Southeast Asia; for example, at Sanchi, Amaravati, Borobudur, and Angkor. Sculpture illustrating the stories of the Bible is so abundant in medieval churches that the churches have been called “Bibles in stone.” Sculpture recounting the heroic deeds of kings and generals are common, especially in Assyria and Rome. The Romans made use of a form known as continuous narrative, the best known example of which is the spiral, or helical, band of relief sculpture that surrounds Trajan’s Column (c. ad 106–113) and tells the story of the Emperor’s Dacian Wars. The episodes in the narrative are not separated into a series of framed compositions but are linked to form a continuous band of unbroken relief.
Portraiture
Portraiture was practiced by the Egyptians but was comparatively rare in the ancient world until the Greeks and Romans made portrait sculpture one of their major artistic achievements. The features of many famous people are known to modern man only through the work of Roman sculptors on coins and medals, portrait busts, and full-length portraits. Portraiture has been an important aspect of Western sculpture from the Renaissance to the present day. Some of the best known modern portrait sculptors are Rodin, Charles Despiau, Marino Marini, and Jacob Epstein.
Scenes of everyday life
Scenes of everyday life have been represented in sculpture mainly on a small scale in minor works. The sculptures that are closest in spirit to the quiet dignity of the great 17th- and 18th-century genre paintings of Johannes Vermeer and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin are perhaps certain Greek tombstones, such as that of the Stele of Hegeso, which represents a quiet, absorbed moment when a seated young woman and her maidservant are looking at a necklace they have just removed from a casket. Intimate scenes of the people and their activities in everyday rural life are often portrayed in medieval and Egyptian reliefs as part of larger compositions.
Animals
Animals have always been important subjects for sculpture. Paleolithic man produced some extraordinarily sensitive animal sculptures both in relief and in the round. Representations of horses and lions are among the finest works of Assyrian sculpture. Egyptian sculptors produced sensitive naturalistic representations of cattle, donkeys, hippopotamuses, apes, and a wide variety of birds and fish. Ancient Chinese sculptors made superb small-scale animal sculptures in bronze and pottery. Animals were the main subject matter for the sculpture of the nomadic tribes of Eurasia and northern Europe, for whom they became the basis for elaborate zoomorphic fantasies. This animal art contributed to the rich tradition of animal sculpture in medieval art. Animals also served as a basis for semi-abstract fantasy in Mexican, Maya, North American Indian, and Oceanic sculpture. The horse has always occupied an important place in Western sculpture, but other animals have also figured in the work of such sculptors as Giambologna, in the 16th century, and Antoine-Louis Barye, in the 19th, as well as numerous sculptors of garden and fountain pieces. Among modern sculptors who have made extensive use of animals or animal-like forms are Brancusi, Picasso, Gerhard Marcks, Germaine Richier, François Pompon, Pino Pascali, and François-Xavier-Maxime Lalanne.
Fantasy
In their attempts to imagine gods and mythical beings, sculptors have invented fantastic images based on the combination and metamorphosis of animal and human forms. A centaur, the Minotaur, and animal-headed gods of the ancient world are straightforward combinations. More imaginative fantasies were produced by Mexican and Maya sculptors and by tribal sculptors in many parts of the world. Fantastic creatures abound in the sculpture produced in northern Europe during the early Middle Ages and the Romanesque period. Fantasy of a playful kind is often found in garden sculpture and fountains.
In the period following World War I, fantasy was a dominant element in representational sculpture. Among its many forms are images derived from dreams, the technological fantasy of science fiction, erotic fantasies, and a whole host of monsters and automata. The Surrealists have made a major contribution to this aspect of modern sculpture.
Other subjects
Architectural backgrounds in sculpture range from the simplified baldacchinos (ornamental structures resembling canopies used especially over altars) of early medieval reliefs to the 17th- and 18th-century virtuoso perspective townscapes of Grinling Gibbons. Architectural accessories such as plinths, entablatures, pilasters, columns, and moldings have played a prominent role both in Greek and Roman sarcophagi, in medieval altarpieces and screens, and in Renaissance wall tombs.
Outside the field of ornament, botanical forms have played only a minor role in sculpture. Trees and stylized lotuses are especially common in Indian sculpture because of their great symbolic significance. Trees are also present in many Renaissance reliefs and in some medieval reliefs.
Landscape, which was an important background feature in many Renaissance reliefs (notably those of Ghiberti) and, as sculptured rocks, appeared in a number of Baroque fountains, entered into sculpture in a new way when Henry Moore combined the forms of caves, rocks, hills, and cliffs with the human form in a series of large reclining figures.
There is nothing in sculpture comparable with the tradition of still-life painting. When objects are represented, it is almost always as part of a figure composition. A few modern sculptors, however, notably Giacomo Manzù and Oldenburg, have used still-life subjects.