The sculptors of these metopes at Olympia successfully addressed this particular issue by sometimes sculpting a scene either before or after the labour had been done, not only to make the whole creation of that metope easier for the sculptor, but this time composition helps us to identify which labour it is more efficiently.
A successful example of this is the, ‘Capture of Cerberus’. This metope (the 11th labour) shows Herakles dragging the Cerberus into daylight – the labour is over. It would have been hard to depict a three headed dog guarding the gates of Hades on a metope, making sure it was clear enough to identify. So the sculptors cleverly sculpted the metope showing after the event, and for us to tell that the dog is Cerberus, coming from the Underworld, they used Hermes holding his kerykeion which blatantly suggests they have been on a trip to the underworld.
The other issue mentioned above was of course containing the right subject matter in the metopes, sometimes joining relevance with the sanctuary and the temple. This issue for sculptors faced at Olympia was particular successful because the theme of the metopes at Olympia, the labours of Herakles made links with both the temple and its surroundings. Herakles is the son of Zeus, and his labours convey various skills that the Olympic athletes would need to use in their competitions. As Herakles won immortality through suffering and struggle, he is a perfect role model for the athletes who will win brief immortality in victory. Six of the metopes also take place in the northern Pelopennese, very close to Olympia. The sculptors also depicted four of the metopes taking place in the four points of the ancient compass. North is the ‘Horses of Diomedes’, east is the ‘Amazon Women’, south is the ‘Cretan Bull’ and west is the ‘Greyon’. These four metopes relate to the Pan-Hellenic sanctuary as people came to the sanctuary for the Games from all over the known world, and these four metopes represent those people.
When addressing the issue of size and scale to make the metopes visible from some distance away, the sculptors at Olympia used a variety of successful techniques. Firstly they made their principal figures in the metopes as large as possible, thereby restricting the number of figures in each labour to no more than three. This successfully helped the viewer to clarify which labour was being represented, clearly. Another successful technique was that all the metopes were craved in high relief. This deep carving resulted in the figures becoming more rounded and therefore more prominent, allowing the figures to protrude from its background. From the high relief of the sculptures we can tell that the sculptors have thought about the design in three dimensions and this it what makes the metopes from an eye view so successful at Olympia.
Overall, I feel that the sculptors of Olympia achieved more successes than failures when they faced the various issues of sculpting a metope. The 12 Labours of Herakles were particularly successful because they were striking to the eye of its ancient viewers with their high relief curvature, which also empathised the strong verticals and horizontals of the restricted three figures in each metope, resulting in all the 12 labours together having a rhythmically linear pattern, enchanting the observers eye.