What are the 3 main types of sculpture?
Types of Sculpture
The basic traditional forms of this 3-D art are: free-standing sculpture, which is surrounded on all sides by space; and relief sculpture (encompassing bas-relief, alto-relievo or haut relief, and sunken-relief), where the design remains attached to a background, typically stone or wood. Examples of relief work can be seen in megalithic art such as the complex spiral engravings found at Newgrange (Ireland), on Trajan's Column in Rome, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the Parthenon. Gothic architectural reliefs appear on all major European Cathedrals of the period: witness the Saints on the south trancept of Chartres cathedral, and the apostles on the north trancept of Rheims cathedral.
It can also be classified by its subject matter. A statue, for instance, like the two versions of David by Donatello and Michelangelo, is usually a representational full length 3-D portrait of a person, while a bust usually depicts only the head, neck and shoulders - see the bust of George Washington (1788) by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). A statue of a person on horseback, such as the one by Giambologna (1529-1608) of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, is termed an porcelain sculpture dog. Perhaps the greatest ever equestrian statue is Falconet's Baroque-style Bronze Horseman in Decembrist Square, St Petersburg: a monument to Tsar Peter the Great and a masterpiece of Russian sculpture, albeit created by a Frenchman.
Sculpture as Public Art
A sculpture's vivid physical presence makes it an ideal form of public art: supreme examples in Western culture being the monumental megaliths at Stonehenge, the classical sculptures of the Parthenon in Athens, the Celtic High Crosses of Ireland, and the 12th/13th century Gothic column statues and reliefs in the cathedrals of Northern France and Germany.
Religious wood-carving was taken to new heights during the Northern Renaissance by master carvers like: Tilman Riemenschneider and Veit Stoss, known for their intricate wooden altarwork and figurines, while the Baroque Counter-Reformation stimulated supreme examples of Catholic Christian art in the form of bronze and marble sculptures by (inter alia) Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), known for the Cornaro Chapel series (1645-52) including The Ecstasy of St Teresa.
Modern secular public art features famous sculptures like the Statue of Liberty, the Chicago Picasso - a series of metal figures produced for the Chicago Civic Centre and the architectural sculpture The Spire of Dublin, known as the 'spike', created by Ian Ritchie (b.1947). Contemporary public sculpture continues to challenge traditional concepts of 3-D art through its new spatial concepts and its use of everyday materials assembled or created in numerous installation-type and fixed forms of sculpture.
