Antonio Canova, marchese d’Ischia

Antonio Canova, marchese d’Ischia (born Nov. 1, 1757, Possagno, Republic of Venice—died Oct. 13, 1822, Venice) was an Italian sculptor, one of the greatest exponents of Neoclassicism. Among his works are the tombs of popes Clement XIV (1783–87) and Clement XIII (1787–92) and statues of Napoleon and of his sister Princess Borghese reclining as Venus Victrix. He was created a marquis for his part in retrieving works of art from Paris after Napoleon’s defeat.

Canova, the son of a stonemason who died in 1761, was reared by his grandfather, also a stonemason. Under the protection of a Venetian senator, Canova, at the age of 11, went to work with the sculptor Giuseppe Bernardi (called Torretti), who lived at Pagnano (Asolo). In the same year (1768) Bernardi moved his studio from provincial Pagnano to Venice, and Canova went with him. The boy helped his master, executed a few humble commissions on his own, and, as was customary at the time, studied classical art and drew from the nude.

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In 1775 Canova set up his own studio in Venice. In 1779 he sculpted Daedalus and Icarus which had been commissioned by Pisani, procurator of the Venetian republic; it was Canova’s first important work. Somewhat Rococo in style, the figures were considered so realistic that the sculptor was accused of making plaster casts from live models.

Canova was in Rome in 1779 and 1780, where he met the leading artists of the period, including the Scottish painter-dealer Gavin Hamilton, who directed Canova’s studies toward a more profound understanding of the antique. Canova visited Naples and the ancient archaeological sites of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Paestum. He returned briefly to Venice, but in 1781 he was again in Rome, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life. There he became an active and influential figure in the artistic life of the city and was always willing to help young artists and find them patrons.

In 1783 Canova received an important commission for the tomb of Pope Clement XIV in the Roman church of SS. Apostoli. When it was displayed in 1787, crowds flocked to see it. That same year he was commissioned to execute a tomb in St. Peter’s to Pope Clement XIII. Completed in 1792, it shows a more developed understanding of the classical aesthetic of antiquity than his monument to Clement XIV. Subsequent tombs were increasingly Neoclassical and combined restraint with sentiment, in a manner akin to the work of Canova’s English contemporary, John Flaxman.

The French invasion of Rome in 1798 sent Canova northward. In Vienna he worked on a funerary monument to Maria Christina (1798–1805) in the Augustinerkirche. In 1802, at the Pope’s instigation, he accepted Napoleon’s invitation to go to Paris, where he became court sculptor and considerably influenced French art. He spent part of 1802 in Paris working on a bust of Napoleon, and in 1806 Joseph Bonaparte commissioned an equestrian statue of Napoleon.

In 1808 he finished one of his most famous works, in which he shows Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Borghese, reclining almost naked on a couch as Venus Victrix—a fusion of classical goddess and contemporary portrait. In 1811 he completed two colossal statues of Napoleon, in which the emperor is shown as a heroic classical nude. In the Napoleonic period he had also begun carving some of his most expressive and ambitious pieces, Perseus with Medusa’s Head (1801) and the Pugilists (1802).

Canova in 1805 was appointed inspector general of fine arts and antiquities of the papal state. In 1810 he was made president of the Accademia di S. Luca in Rome (a position he was to hold for life). He sculpted his well-known Three Graces from 1812 to 1816. After having visited Paris to arrange for the return of Italian art treasures plundered by the French, he went to London (1815) to give his opinion on the Elgin Marbles. The success of his mission in Paris led to the reward of the title of marquis of Ischia by the Pope. While in London, the Prince Regent, later George IV, commissioned a life-size group of Venus and Mars. Other late commissions included the Stuart monument in St. Peter’s (1819), the alteration and completion of the equestrian Napoleon into Charles III of Naples (1819), and a monument of George Washington (1820; destroyed by fire in 1830), idealized in Roman costume, erected at Raleigh, N.C., in 1821.

Canova was also a painter, but his paintings (mostly in the Gipsoteca Canoviana at Possagno) constitute a minor part of his works. They include a few portraits and re-creations of antique paintings discovered at Herculaneum. Canova was buried at Possagno in a temple designed by himself in imitation of the Pantheon in Rome.

Canova was as important in the development of the Neoclassical style as Jacques-Louis David in painting. Canova’s domination of European sculpture at the turn of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th is reflected in countless adulations in memoirs, poems, and newspapers. “Sublime,” “superb,” and “marvelous” are adjectives frequently found describing Canova’s work in his lifetime, although his reputation as a sculptor declined considerably during the following century.