Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova was a Italian sculptor , born on November 1st 1757 with Possagno (Province of Trévise) in the Venetian State, dead the October 13rd 1822 with Venice.

Biography

Born in a family from masons stones since generations, he learned as of his more young age art of the size of the marble. In 1768, on the recommendation of the senator Giovanni Falieri, it is placed like apprentice in the sculptor Giuseppe Bernardi Torretti, into Pagnano d' Asolo (province of Trévise), then will integrate later the school Santa Marina into Venice.

After having gained several prices with the Academy of the fine arts of Venice, it gave to it successively several works which reflect it soon in the forefront of the modern sculptors, and in which it could combine the imitation of nature with the ideal beauties of the antique. He studied the Antique art and carved, throughout his life, various statues inspired of mythologies Greek and Roman, as well as cenotaphs, busts and statues in foot of various famous characters of the time. He is famous for the delicacy of his sculptures on marble. Its work is regarded as the prototype of the neo-classic sculpture and was the subject of several studies of Mario Praz.

It devoted a good part of its fortune which its art with support or welfare activities was worth to him for young artists or artists in the need.

It successfully cultivated also painting. Canova had been called several times at Paris by Napoleon Bonaparte: it returned in 1815, charged by the pope with governing the recognition and the translation of the monuments removed with the Italy and which claimed the pontifical government. It was charged to negotiate with Dominique Vivant Denon the restitution, by France, of the works of art Italian flights by the Napoleonean army. It was anobli and accepted a certain number of honorary distinctions. Its skin was transferred in its birthplace.

Its principal works are: Thésée sitting on Minotaure overcome ; the mausoleum of Clement III , in the Basilica of Saint-Pierre, the mausoleum of Clement XIV , out of marble, in the church of the Saint-Apostles; Psyché child, upright, holding by the wings a butterfly posed in its hand ; the mausoleum of Alfieri , in the church of Santa-Croce to Florence; Washington , for the senate of the Caroline, the Madeleine , Orphée and Eurydice , Maze and Icare , Adonis and Venus , Endymion , victorious Venus (Pauline Bonaparte), Polymnie (Élisa Bonaparte), etc

This artist is characterized by the purity from contours, the elegance of the forms, the wisdom of the composition, the expression of the aspects, the skill to give to the marble the polish and the marrowy one of alive nature; some refuse strength and the originality to him. He was associated foreigner of the Institut of France.

Its Œuvre was published in 1824 by Etienne Achille Réveil and Henri de Latouche. Antoine Quatremère de Quincy gave a Étude on Canova and its works , and the Count Leopoldo Cicognara its Biographie , Venice, 1825.

Carved portraits

It made many carved portraits, that is to say in bust ( Domenico Cimarosa , 1808 or the pope Pie VII between 1804 and 1807, but also in foot where it combines the face, modelled on nature, with a body idealized, sometimes stripped and inspired of antiquity. Its portrait of Napoleon pacificatory in March , completed in 1806 where the emperor appears naked, recalls indeed an ancient marble. It forever acccepté by its récipendiaire, in spite of a maintenance which Canova with this last in had 1810 where he tried to explain his esthetic step. The artist however made several other sculptures of the close relations of Napoleon, of which that of his/her mother ( Mrs Mère , 1807), in sitted posture a near to that of the sitted Agrippine of the Musée of Capitole.

One of its works most famous remainder its Pauline Borghèse out of Venus Victrix (1804 - 1808) where the latter is represented lengthened on a sofa, covered just with a light veil not masking anything relief of its chest. Galatea, for which Pauline would have also posed, is a statue which is in the Demidoff museum in San Martino and a copy in the garden of Mulini. (Isle of Elba)

Works

Works whose dates remain to be specified:
  • Hercules and Lichas , sculpture on marble. Gipsoteca Canoviana, Possagno.
  • victorious Thésée of Minotaure , group carved on marble, 145,5 X 158,7 cm. 1781-1783. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
  • Bust of Napoleon . Castle of Fontainebleau.
  • Bust of the cardinal Fesch . Napoleonean museum of the Town hall, Ajaccio.
  • Peace , sculpture on marble. Preserved until in 1953 at Saint-Pétersbourg. From now on installed with the Museum of Western and Eastern art to Kiev.
  • Dancer with the finger on her chin , (1809/1823), marble statue, 177 cm, National Gallery off Art, Washington D.C
  • Naïade , (1815/1823), marble, 80 X 190 cm, National Gallery off Art, Washington D.C

Dated works:

  • 1808 : Pauline Borghèse . Borghèse villa, Rome. Basilica of the saints apostles, Rome.
  • - 1808: Portrait of Domenico Cimarosa . Protomoteca Capitolina, Rome.
  • - 1808: Portrait of Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte . Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth.
  • 1808 -: Napoleon in March . Aspley House (London), a copy in Accademia di Brera, Milan.
  • 1808 - 1812: Terpsichore . Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Parma.
  • 1812 : Self-portrait , sculpture on marble. Temple, Possagno.
  • 1812 : Head of Helene . Palazzo Albrizzi, Venice.
  • 1812 : Polymnia . Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
  • 1813 : Juliette Récamier as a Beatrice . Museum of the fine arts, Lyon.
  • 1815 : Hercules and Lycas . Galleria Nazionale d' Arte Moderna, Rome.
  • 1815 - 1822: Mars and Venus . Palate of Buckingham, London.
  • 1816 : Hébé . Communal Pinacoteca, Forlì.
  • 1817 - 1822: the Graces . Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
  • 1819 : Cénoptaphe of Stuart . Basilica Saint-Pierre, Rome.
  • 1821 : George Washington . Raleigh (North Carolina).
  • 1822 : Ferdinand IV in Minerve . Museo Nazionale, Naples.

Some also allot to Antonio Canova a painting (oil on fabric) entitled the Removal of Europe (according to Véronèse), preserved at the regional Museum of Rimouski (Quebec), on the basis of signature remaining to be authenticated.

Sources

  • Antonio Canova and the portrait: nature with the ideal , G Scherf, the objet d'art, out of the ordinary n° 28

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