By 'architectural sculpture' we mean sculptures, whether in relief or in the round, that serve to embellish buildings (chiefly public buildings). Most of our surviving specimens come from temples. Architectural sculptures proper occur as pediment compositions, finials, and either metope-panel or frieze reliefs (depending on whether a building belongs to the Doric or the Ionic order). There are other parts of a building which can have pictorial sculptures on them: for example columns, base walls and protective parapets (thorakion). It is normally on a building of the Ionic order that these special features appear. Besides pictorial sculptures there are a large number of decorative motifs with their position often determined by their architectural order.

Architectural sculptures usually carried clear indications of the use they were intended for. They envisaged a bottom-up perspective, since the viewer was standing below them. Details that could not be seen from a distance were not given elaborate attention; surfaces that were never going to be visible were left unworked; and the background was painted in colour (so as to point up the outline of the figures), as were the hair, eyes, lips and clothing, so as to make them more conspicuous.

The  decorative sculptures of the Parthenon - metope-panels, frieze, and pediment compositions - are in every way a special case. From other public buildings in Athens and Attica portions of mid-5th century architectural sculptures have survived. Unhappily, most are very badly damaged. We have almost no information about the architectural sculpture of the 4th century B.C..


| introduction | arts | literature | education | religion | Classical period

Note: Click on the icons for enlargements and explanations.
Underlined links lead to related texts; those not underlined ones are an explanatory glossary.