Pedimental sculptures in the United States

Historian 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.

[1] 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 Professor Gardner of Oxford University, “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.”[2] In all examples, classical and modern, the central area below the apex is inevitably the tallest, most spacious, the natural focus, and will contain the main figures and the focus of action.

The well-known classical examples all observe "unity of action", although the Greek historian Pausanias describes a sculpture by Praxiteles in which Hercules appears several times in different sizes.

The earliest seems to be Whitehall (1765), outside Annapolis, Maryland, attributed to English architect Joseph Horatio Anderson and English-born carver William Buckland, typical of early dependence on European talent.

One 21st-century example is the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, Tennessee, with a pedimental sculpture Orpheus and Eurydice by sculptor Raymond Kaskey completed in 2006.