Pedimental sculpture
[8][9] Large parts of the sculptural group are in the Archaeological Museum of Corfu, including the central figure of the winged gorgon Medusa, flanked by two crouching lions.
[9] In the late or Hellenistic phase of Etruscan art, after about 300 BCE, Greek-style groups were introduced, but in terracotta rather than stone; some large fragments of these have survived.
[13] The group on the final rebuilding of the Capitoline Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus is known from literary descriptions and depictions in other works of art, but none of it is known to survive.
[20] Awareness of the Parthenon pediments, almost the only classical example to substantially survive in situ to the Renaissance, and eventually highly influential, increased only gradually in Western Europe.
[21] The British Museum holds 17 figurative pedimental sculptures from the Parthenon, as part of the so-called Elgin Marbles, in their permanent collection.
In both cases the composition was often arranged in tiers, with many small figures making up a Christian scene, sometimes dominated by a much larger Christ in Majesty or a Virgin Mary.
[2] Most buildings with pediments by Andrea Palladio followed the simpler formulae, but some of his villas around the Veneto feature large sprawling figures supporting the coat of arms, so that most of the tympanum is filled.
The small Tempietto Barbaro near the villa (c. 1583) has a composition in stucco with eight figures filling the space; like some other examples this seems to have been added after the rest of the building was finished, and the designer and sculptor are unknown.
Such compositions remained uncommon in Baroque architecture, even in the grandest buildings, and somewhat unexpectedly are found more often north of the Alps, with many in Protestant countries.
Heraldic sculptures The arrival of Neoclassical architecture favoured the return of large free-standing figure compositions in the pediments of important buildings, with Vilnius Cathedral (by 1783) one of the earliest in the style.
By 1874, perhaps the most ambitious example in size and in the number of figures was that by Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire for the La Madeleine Church in Paris.
Drafting the Declaration of Independence on the Jefferson Memorial, by Adolph Alexander Weinman (1943) is an exception to the usual allegorical subject matter, showing the Committee of Five around a table.
Architectural terracotta was sometimes used, as at the department store Harrods in London (glazed, by Royal Doulton), and (in polychrome) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the 1930s.
[31][32] Walter Copland Perry wrote that it was proof of the power of Greek art that the classical sculptors not only overcame the rigid restrictions of the pediment's shape, but turned them to their advantage.
[29] Compositionally, the restrictions imposed by both the physical triangular shape of a pediment, and the traditional themes that are usually employed for the subject matter, are, according to Ernest Arthur Gardner, "as exactly regulated as that of a sonnet or a Spenserian stanza: the artist has liberty only in certain directions and must not violate the laws of rhythm.
The well-known classical examples all observe "unity of action", although the Greek geographer Pausanias describes a sculpture by Praxiteles in which Hercules appears several times in different sizes.
