The pedestal depicted several other labours of Hercules in basso rilievo. Locatelli entered into the commission, which took him two years to complete, without establishing a price. When he presented a bill for £2400, Orford refused to pay it and the case was referred to a committee of artists from the Royal Academy.
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A basso rilievo of Psyche carried by the Zephyrs was the result. He sent it to the Royal Academy, where John Flaxman, recognizing its merits, gave it an excellent place. Again he became unsettled. He conceived a wish to further his artistic education in Rome, and the first step to this goal went to go to London; there he received conflicting advice from Flaxman and from Francis Legatt Chantrey, the former urging him go to Rome as the highest school of sculpture in the world, the latter maintaining that London could do as much for him.
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Tinted Venus, in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool In monumental and portrait statues for public places, necessarily represented in postures of dignity and repose, Gibson was very happy. His largest effort of this class was the group showing Queen Victoria Supported by Justice and Clemency, in the Houses of Parliament, his finest work in the round. Of noble character also in execution and expression of thought is the statue of William Huskisson with the bared arm; and no less, in effect of aristocratic ease and refinement, the seated figure of Dudley North. Her Majesty Queen Victoria, supported by Justice and Clemency by John Gibson, Parliament, The Illustrated London News, 7 March 1857 Gibson's chief excellence however lay in basso rilievo.
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The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo, haut-relief),In modern English, just "high relief"; alto-rilievo was used in the 18th century and a little beyond, while haut-relief has surprisingly found a niche, restricted to archaeological writing, in recent decades after it was used in under-translated French texts about prehistoric cave art, and copied even by English writers. Its use is to be deprecated. where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief (), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato,Murray, Peter & Linda, Penguin Dictionary of Art & Artists, London, 1989. p. 348, Relief; bas-relief remained common in English until the mid 20th century.
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His thorough knowledge of the horse, and his constant study of the Elgin Marbles, casts of which are in Rome, resulted in the two bassi rilievi, the size of life, which belonged to Lord Fitzwilliam: The Hours Leading the Horses of the Sun, and Phaethon driving the Chariot of the Sun. Most of his memorial works are also in basso rilievo. Some of these are of a truly refined and pathetic character, such as the monument to the Countess of Leicester, wife of Thomas Coke, the 1st Earl, or that to his friend Mrs Huskisson in Chichester Cathedral, and that of the Bonomi children. Passion, either indulged or repressed, was the natural impulse of his art: repressed as in the Hours Leading the Horses of the Sun, and as in the Hunter and Dog; indulged as in the meeting of Hero and Leander, a drawing executed before he left England.
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