The burgeoning of native sculpture was due to technical modernism attributable to the ancient Merovingian town of Lutetia, forerunner of what is now Paris. Half-size images were produced with enhanced reducing machines. Reproduced sculptures were appropriate for public displays. These miniature sculptures were further scaled down to bronze mini-images. Terra cotta was another medium, which created representations of learned men and female fashion icons in confluence with nymph images. In France and England, biscuit porcelain was also popular in making miniaturizations of actual larger figures.
Because of the advancements made in casting methodologies, many sculptors fashioned art pieces in the fields of metal casting, architecture and furniture making. Sand casting innovations enabled production of much larger images at less cost. Albert Carrier-Belleuse, a French sculptor and painter, came up with elaborate styles in fashioning antique gas-fed lighting fixtures showcasing female figures. Alfred Stevens of England was greatly inspired by the Italian Renaissance to churn out pieces hewn by knives and refined by fired ovens. At the close of the century, Alfred Gilbert also mastered the art of using gold to produce prized sculptures.
These are the less popular forms of sculptures of that era, hewing closely as they did to more traditional methods of ornamentation and relief panels in religious and public places. Subjects were chosen to echo antagonistic themes, serving satirical yet arresting images. Independent artists found adherence to architectural and patron standards rather confining, with some artists, like David d'Angers and Jean-Baptiste Carpeuaux, actually attempting to unfetter themselves from such bonds.
Bronze representations in perpetual exhibits within public squares and similar open spaces initially monumentalized non-monarchical subjects, such as those by Sir Richard Westmacott. William Pitt and Charles James Fox, political icons of that time, were also remembered with their own statues. Soon, philanthropists, traders and lower-ranking military men were chosen as subjects.
Concurrent escapist depictions in memorial places for the departed had showed brave independence against religious bondage in public images. Municipal final resting places in Italy and Paris were adorned with non-conservative representations of souls taken up to heaven by angelic unisexual bearers.