Christian sculpture

Orthodox round sculpture

"Are the adoration of sculptures rejected by Eastern Catholics (and by most of Oriental Catholics, I think) and by Orthodoxs because icons are simply better, because all their character ecclesiological, or because the sculptures are rejectable completely, in themselves? It seems to me it is only accidental, as catholics of the East live in total communion with the Western ones, and there are orthodox of Latin tradition, who use sculptures in their cult."

It's an accident of history, actually. Prior to the iconoclasm, there was three dimensional Byzantine religious art, including both relief and full sculpture in the round. However, statuary is large, heavy, difficult to conceal and easy to destroy; not much of it survived to the restoration of the images in 843, and most of what remains consists of small ivory diptyches and triptyches--of excellent quality, by the way.

After the iconoclasm, Byzantium was not really in any state to resurrect sculpture as an art form; painting and mosaics were both easier and more atuned to the theology of images that began to emerge from the works of John Damascene and Theodore Studites. So three dimensional religious art never regained its place in the East. Contrary to what a lot of people think, there really is no canonical prohibition against statuary, it's just that there is no Byzantine Orthodox tradition of liturgical statuary. The canons of iconography developed from the 9th century in the absence of statuary, and thus never took it into account.

(from Byzantine forum)