CANOVA, ANTONIO

CANOVA, ANTONIO (1757–1822), Italian sculptor. The leading proponent of neoclassicism and Italy's last internationally famous artist, the sculptor Antonio Canova, born in the village of Possagno in 1757, rose to celebrity from humble origins. The son and grandson of provincial stonecarvers in the rural Veneto, he was brought up and trained by his paternal grandfather, Pasino Canova, after his father Pietro's death in 1761 and the almost immediate remarriage of his mother, Angela Zardo. He attracted the attention of members of the patrician Falier family and, with their help, moved to Venice, where he studied sculpture in the studio of Giuseppe Bernardi (c. 1696–1774). There he learned to work in a rococo naturalistic idiom that he quickly abandoned after his permanent move to Rome in 1780.

In Rome, the center of artistic innovation and birthplace of neoclassicism, Canova was supported by a pension from the Venetian senate and lodged with the Serene Republic's ambassador to the Holy See, Girolamo Zulian. It was a commission from Zulian, Theseus and the Dead Minotaur (1781–1783), that initially established Canova's reputation as a neoclassical sculptor of great promise. The success of the Zulian statue earned him the commission for the tomb of Pope Clement XIV Ganganelli (1783–1787) for the Roman basilica of the Holy Apostles and a second funerary monument to the Venetian Pope Clement XIII Rezzonico for Saint Peter's (1787–1792). Papal tombs, the most prestigious commissions possible for sculptors, were erected in public spaces and listed in guidebooks, facts that helped to promote Canova's reputation far beyond Rome.

The French invasion of the Papal States in 1796 and the collapse of the pontifical government of Pius VI in 1798 sent Canova home to the Austrianruled Veneto, where he lived in exile as an opponent of the French puppet Roman Republic (1798–1799). From Possagno, he journeyed to Vienna to help gain support for the deposed pope and received the commission for his most important tomb, the moving Monument to the Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria, erected in the church of the Augustinians in Vienna in 1805. His Austrian contacts led to additional commissions, including Theseus Struggling with the Centaur (1804–1819).

Despite wars and political upheaval, Canova was able to maintain a flourishing professional practice after 1800 because he refused to allow politics to determine his patrons. During the hegemony of Napoleon from 1800 to 1814, he often worked for members of the Bonaparte family, executing statues for Napoleon himself (Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, 1803–1806), for Bonaparte's mother Letizia (Madame Mère as Agrippina, 1804–1807), and for the emperor's sister Pauline (Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix, 1804–1808), among others. As a conservative Catholic and Venetian patriot (the French had destroyed the political independence of Venice), Canova was essentially francophobic. The question of cynicism in working for the Bonapartes is still a matter of scholarly debate.

The sculptor's admiration for Napoleon's first wife, Joséphine, and his delight in working for her, however, are beyond dispute. She was an Old Regime aristocrat who wished only to have the best specimens of Canova's chisel for her gallery at the château de Malmaison. Canova found her highly sympathetic and executed several works for her such as Hebe (1800–1805), Dancer (1805–1812), Paris (1807–1812), and The Three Graces (1812–1816). The Malmaison gallery briefly formed the finest private collection of Canova's sculpture in existence and featured the graceful, elegant mythological figures that were the artist's specialty. These statues passed into the Russian imperial collections after Joséphine's death in 1814 and are still exhibited in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Elegant, graceful, coyly erotic, and smooth-surfaced marble statues of mythological and literary figures were also extremely popular among Canova's British patrons, who formed the majority of the sculptor's clients, especially after 1814. He executed Psyche (1789–1792) for Henry Blundell, a second version of The Three Graces (1815–1817) for John Russell, sixth duke of Bedford, and Mars and Venus (1816–1821) for the Prince Regent George, who also commissioned Monument to the Last Stuarts (1817–1819) for Saint Peter's. While in London in 1815, Canova testified before the parliamentary committee in favor of the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens. British assistance to Canova while he was in Paris in 1815 to oversee the repatriation from the former Musée Napoléon of stolen works of art was crucial to Italy's recovery of a highly significant part of its cultural patrimony.

Canova's last years were spent in executing commissions for various British patrons and in the construction and decoration of a parish church in Possagno, which still stands as a monument to his Catholic piety, fame, and neoclassical aesthetic. He died in Venice in 1822.

CANOVA, ANTONIO

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