Sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt.

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.

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 artworks.Ī 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. The revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelo's statue of David. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith. The Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period.

Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, as well as many in Central and South America and Africa. 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. However, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, and this has been lost. 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. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded or cast. 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 almost complete freedom of materials and process. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. 1513–1515), 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 The Dying Gaul, or The Capitoline Gaul, a Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic work of the late 3rd century BCE Capitoline Museums, Rome Assyrian lamassu gate guardian from Khorsabad, c. For other uses, see Sculptor (disambiguation).

Medieval sculpture