CANOVA, Antonio. – Sculptor, born at Possagno on 1 November 1757, died at Venice on 13 October 1822. At the beginning of his artistic career he spent much time in Venice, in the halls of the Farsetti palace museum, studying the plaster casts of ancient statuary, and this may be said to have been his first school, in addition to that of the sculptor G. Torretti.
His first patron was the Venetian senator G. Falier, who commissioned from him two statues: Eurydice and Orpheus (1773–76, Asolo, Villa Falier); but his birth as a new sculptor, in opposition to late Baroque style, already visible in the group Daedalus and Icarus (1779, Venice, Museo Correr), matured during his stay in Rome with the Monument to Clement XIV, executed at the age of twenty-five (1784–87, Rome, church of the SS. Apostoli). Here he revived the Berninian scheme of the Monument to Urban VIII, but the three figures of the Deposition: the Pope, Temperance, and Meekness, have an Attic simplicity and fully express a religious composure. Soon after, Prince Rezzonico and the two cardinal brothers commissioned from C. the Monument to Clement XIII. For five years C. worked on the grandiose tomb which was unveiled in St Peter’s Basilica in 1792, on Holy Thursday. Great admiration was aroused by the realism of the two lions guarding the sarcophagus, the classicism of the Genius of Death, the idealism of the allegorical figure bearing the Cross, and the expressive power of the aged Pope absorbed in prayer. From that time until his death, C.’s style had no rivals in Europe.
To the passion of his age for classical mythology C. gave satisfaction by evoking it in his creations: Cupid and Psyche (1794, Paris, Louvre), Hercules hurling Lichas into the sea (1795–1813, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna), Perseus (1799–1802, Vatican, Museo Pio-Clementino), the Italic Venus (1805–1812, Florence, Galleria Palatina), Venus Victrix in the guise of Pauline Borghese (1806–1808, Rome, Galleria Borghese), Paris (1812–13, Munich, Alte Pinakothek), The Three Graces (1813–16, Leningrad, Hermitage), a group for which Foscolo, in his well-known poem, wished to be its ideal inspirer.
Also worthy of mention are the numerous stelae: that for Admiral Emo (1792–95, Venice, Museo dell’Arsenale), that to Antonio Eustachian (1797, Padua, Museo Civico), to Giovanni Volpato (1806–1807, Rome, portico of the SS. Apostoli), to Domenico Mancini (1817–18, Forlì, church of the SS.ma Trinità). He often repeated the scheme of the slightly tapering stele, surmounted by various crowns; in low relief the bust of the deceased, with a young woman in an attitude of mourning before II.
Possagno. Tempio Canoviano.
The monuments to Vittorio Alfieri (1804–10, Florence, church of S. Croce), to Maria Christina of Austria (1798–1803, Vienna, church of the Augustinians), to the Stuarts (1817–20, Rome, Vatican Basilica), though less successful in their architecture, nevertheless contain details of exquisite beauty; the last, with the busts of the exiled kings James III and his sons Charles III and Henry IX, especially in the two funeral Genii, represents one of the most significant moments in C.’s art.
Of great importance is his portraiture, the part of his vast œuvre most admired even today. The marble loses its rigidity, since C. sculpted “the most fleshy flesh ever treated by chisels” (L. Cicognara). A singular skill in modelling and vigorous poetic investigation are revealed in Napoleon as First Consul (1803, Florence, Galleria Palatina) and in Napoleon Victorious (1811, Milan, Palazzo Brera), in the portraits of the Napoleonic family: Madame Mère (1805–1808, Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection), Cardinal Fesch (1807, Possagno, Gipsoteca), Pauline Borghese (1807, Rome, Museo Napoleonico), Caroline Bonaparte, Joachim Murat (1812, Naples, Palazzo Reale di Capodimonte). Great solidity of plastic planes is found in the two portraits of Pius VII (1817, Vatican, Braccio Nuovo; Rome, Palazzo dei Conservatori) and in the figure of Pius VI in prayer, a work left unfinished (1822, Vatican Basilica).
Within about thirty years, C. sculpted fifty-three statues, twelve groups, fourteen cenotaphs, eight large monuments, seven colossi, two colossal groups, fifty-four busts, twenty-six bas-reliefs; this did not prevent the artist from taking part in the public life of his time. The motu proprio of 1822 by Pius VII, prohibiting the removal from the Roman State of ancient monuments of painting and sculpture, was suggested by C., who also originated the Vatican collection of the Lapidary Museum by donating to the Pope eighty cippi with inscriptions acquired from the Giustiniani family. Appointed Inspector of Fine Arts in Rome and in the Papal States on 10 August 1822, C. took up the post and rendered useful services to the Holy See.
After repeated entreaties from the French ambassador and Cardinal Consalvi, he went to Paris for the first time in 1802 for the portrait of Bonaparte, a second time in 1810 during the exile of Pius VII for the portrait of the Empress Marie Louise – in the Diary dictated to his half-brother Abbot Sartori one can see his religious consistency and his love for the things of Italy – and a final time in August 1815 for the negotiations over the restitution of works of art looted from the State of the Church. C. overcame difficulties and resistance: the correspondence with Cardinal Consalvi on this matter is of interest. In twenty days the restitution of the statues, paintings, codices, manuscripts, medals, and prints listed was accomplished. C.’s name was inscribed in the Golden Book of the Capitol, and Pius VII conferred on him the title of Marquis of Ischia and an annual income, which C. devoted to pensions for young artists and for the benefit of academies.
On a design by Pietro Bosio and at the suggestion of Antonio Selva, in his last years C. arranged for the erection of a great temple in Possagno: he himself laid the first stone on 11 July 1819, dressed in the habit of the Supreme Order of the Knights of Christ. For his church he had painted the large altarpiece The Deposition of Christ from the Cross, and he succeeded in completing some metopes with episodes from the Old and New Testaments and in modelling in plaster the great Pietà. To religious art he had given one of his masterpieces, the Penitent Magdalene (1796, Genoa, Palazzo Bianco). He died at Venice in 1822; his funeral was celebrated by the Cardinal Patriarch in the basilica of S. Marco, and the funeral oration was delivered by Leopoldo Cicognara in the Accademia di Belle Arti.
His art, which some like to call the counterpart of Foscolo’s poetry, represents the last great voice of Italian art to move Europe; in an individuality of form and spiritual conception it expresses the monumental value of sculpture. Rigid classicism found its representative in Thorwaldsen; C.’s was in the end a romantic attitude toward classicism, which explains one of the reasons, not the least, for his charm and genuine greatness. – See Pl. XLV.