Antonio Canova

Italian sculptor

• Born: November 1, 1757
• Birthplace: Possagno, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)
• Died: October 13, 1822
• Place of death: Venice (now in Italy)

Canova fixed the ideal style in neoclassical sculpture for generations. His works were considered the standard of international artistic excellence in his day and his name and opinions held great authority.

Early Life

Antonio Canova (kah-NOH-vah) was the son of Angela and Pietro Canova. In 1761, his twenty-six-year-old father, a stonemason, died. The following year, his mother remarried and moved to a village west of Possagno, leaving young Antonio in the care of Pasino Canova, his paternal grandfather, who was also a stonemason. In 1768, Antonio was apprenticed to Giuseppe Bernardi, known as Torretti, in nearby Pagnano. He received his first formal lessons in this active studio that manufactured garden sculpture. There, Canova would have absorbed proficiency in handling stone, in efficient delegation to specialized assistants of the various mechanical steps in the production process, and in the administration of the technical and financial aspects of a studio.

In autumn of 1768, Torretti took the young Canova to his other studio in Venice. For the first time Canova was able to study Greco-Roman sculpture in private Venetian collections. He also studied the collections of plaster casts in the palace of Filippo Farsetti and frequented the academy. In 1770, Senator Giovanni Falier, who had shown an interest in Canova’s work, commissioned two baskets of fruit in stone and two life-size figures.

Encouraged, Canova left Torretti’s studio and in 1775 established his own studio in the cloister of Santo Stefano in Venice. At this time he won second place in a competition organized by the Venice Academy. Having achieved a reputation for portraiture, he carved the naturalistic life-size marble Daedalus and Icarus (1779), his first truly original work, for the procurator Pietro Vittor Pisani. Exhibited at the annual Venetian art fair of the Ascension, it was a great public and financial success. With this money Canova left for Rome October 9, 1779.

On November 4, 1779, via Bologna and Florence, Canova arrived in Rome. He was received by the Venetian ambassador Girolamo Zulian, who provided him with a studio in the embassy palace. There he was able to study private and public collections and the sculpture of Roman churches. The young Canova also benefited from his acquaintance with the most advanced artists and critics of the age.

Life’s Work

In the winter of 1780, Canova visited Naples, where he saw great collections of antiquities. Back in Rome, he exhibited a plaster cast of his Daedalus and Icarus to the influential artist and archaeologist Gavin Hamilton, who recognized his talent. Hamilton advised Canova on the direction his style should take and was instrumental in turning him from the Baroque to the revolutionary neoclassical style first propagated by the German archaeologist and historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann . The young sculptor became determined to study antique style thoroughly.

Winckelmann’s aesthetic revolution carried an enormous moral charge. He condemned the excesses of the Baroque as not only offensive to sensibility but also injurious to rationality, humankind’s highest faculty. He favored the pure Greek art with its noble simplicity and calm grandeur over the corrupt Roman art.

In 1781, Ambassador Zulian commissioned the marble Theseus and the Minotaur . This gave Canova the chance of proving himself in the new style. He accepted the advice of men he had grown to respect, restrained his natural inclination toward liveliness, and altered his style in accordance with the new doctrine of tranquil grandeur.

In 1783, the Venetian Giovanni Volpato, to whose daughter Canova had been briefly engaged, attained for Canova the commission for the monumental Tomb of Pope Clement XIV (1783-1787). Here he purifies the Baroque elements represented by such funerary monuments as Gianlorenzo Bernini’s Tomb of Pope Urban VIII by replacing Bernini’s lavish allegorical approach with figures in noble, body-clinging draperies, their restraint and pose reinforcing the clean severity of the entire composition. The figures do not interact but appear to be juxtaposed, an arrangement that heightens the quiet solemnity. At the unveiling of this piece in 1787, Canova’s international reputation was established. The immediate, enormous success made him the most celebrated sculptor of his time.

Canova’s work on the tomb of Clement XIV was so intense that, as a result of his constant running of the drill that had to be pressed against the stone with his chest, he suffered severe deformation of the ribs. This injury was connected to the cause of his death in 1822. Canova’s output would vary between two stylistic extremes: powerful, life-size monuments and intimate figures of an erotic nature. Works such as the tender Cupid and Psyche (1787-1793) were calculated to give greatest satisfaction when contemplated in a private manner.

Canova’s sculpture combined the purity of white marble and the simplicity of antique forms with the softness of execution. His mature works were so successful because the references to the ancients were always clear. Their sensuality was often heightened by the working of the marble and by the definite sense of line and silhouette. Except for a few works, Canova’s productions are of a translucent delicacy.

Canova’s human figures display his knowledge of formalized anatomy. He did not try to portray the body realistically. Part of the appeal of such pieces as Hebe (1796) is the intricate, undulating lines that abstract the forms, aided by the unnatural whiteness of the marble, and thus negate realism. Canova’s movement toward abstraction was evident by the ease with which his works translated into outline engraving without losing total effect.

With the rise of Napoleon I , circumstances in France changed for sculpture. Neoclassicism, because it assumed a political position of patriotism and social progress, was the ideal style for propagandizing the very meaning of the empire. Canova’s popularity generated commissions from Napoleon and his family. In most of these pieces he sought to depict the dynasty as successors to their imagined imperial Roman ancestors.

The period from 1800 to 1814 was extremely productive for Canova. Two of his greatest masterpieces, Pauline Borghese as Venus Victorious (1804-1808) and the Tomb of Archduchess Maria Christina (1805-1809), were produced during this period. The tomb deliberately detaches itself from the church, focuses the viewer’s attention exclusively on itself, and remains stoically silent about the possible meaning or resolution of death. It is strangely lacking in both instruction and celebration. The participants do not face the observers; they simply participate in the endless procession to the grave. The portrait of Pauline Borghese is an ideal image where the elements of classicism, technical virtuosity, and a submerged sensuality are joined in a subtly evocative whole. This cool yet voluptuous figure shows the wide range of sexuality that Canova’s outline style can express. With these two works, Canova reached the peak of his career; unlike most artists he managed to stay there for the rest of his life.

In his later life, Canova traveled extensively between Venice, Rome, Vienna, Paris, and London. His reputation for neutrality, for his dedication to basic ethical causes as well as his reputation as an artist, made Canova the ideal papal agent at the Congress of Paris in 1815. The Papal States won back most of their vast artistic treasures through Canova’s shrewd diplomatic tactics. From Paris he traveled to London, where he saw the Elgin Marbles. There he quickly realized that most of the works on which he had based his style had been Roman copies, and he identified the copies as affected, exaggerated, and conventional. His advanced age, however, prevented any further change in his artistic direction.

Little is known about Canova’s intimate life. Although he experienced enduring hurt over his father’s early death and his mother’s abandonment, there appeared to be a detachment from conventional personal affections or passions. However, throughout his life Canova was a modest, kind, and generous man, especially to young and struggling artists and to his half brother, who seemed not to deserve his generosity. In 1820, the first sharp symptoms of his fatal illness appeared and undermined his strength as he continued to work. Scarcely able to eat, suffering from severe abdominal pain, he died on October 13, 1822. He was buried in the new Tempio, the church that he built for Possagno, his native town.

Significance

Antonio Canova’s achievement was to remain the ideal exemplar for academic sculptors throughout most of the nineteenth century. He worked in enough genres to provide a variety of imitable forms. His superficially simple antique style was pure and graceful without overemphatic voluptuousness. It was repeated all over Europe and the United States but with an intensification of hardness and dryness that became too evident in the studio repetitions and other copies of his art.

Canova was the one man who actually made sculpture in accordance with Winckelmann’s theories. The lack of high-quality sculpture in the classical manner after Canova’s death resulted from following those theories that deadened more talents than they inspired because imitation soon became mechanical. Eventually it was the entire neoclassical style within which Canova worked, with all of its moral and political overtones, that was completely rejected.

Because of the highly polished purity of Canova’s marble forms and their intentional connections with the masterpieces of antiquity, he has received negative criticism from modern critics who favored the sketch over the finished work and who condemned imitation as the enemy of spontaneity. Late nineteenth century criticism condemned his sensuality and his idealization of nature. The twentieth century turned against him for precisely opposite reasons: He was considered too blandly realistic and too lacking in sensual fervor.

During Canova’s lifetime and well after his death, however, his excellence was not questioned. The success of his style entailed its spread in the form of originals, copies by assistants, and engravings that he himself commissioned.

The greatest following of Canova’s style was in France. His own style was partly formed from French ideas as a result of his friendship with the antiquarian Quatremère de Quincy. Their exchange of letters over many years enlightened Canova with a program of classical aesthetics. The Frenchman made subject suggestions and gave encouragement and approval. Canova even tried tinting some of his statues according to ancient practice as suggested by Quatremère’s researches.

Canova was highly influential among such contemporary French artists as the sculptors Antoine Chaudet and Joseph Chinard and the painters Anne-Louis Girodet, François Gérard, Pierre Guérin, and J. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. These painters were inspired by his delicately linear representations of the nude. Many of Girodet’s works adapt Canova’s figures to paint. Ingres’s Bather of Valpinçon (1808) was influenced by Canova’s Venus Italica (1804-1812). Canova’s popularity in England is evidenced by the large number of his works in English collections. The sculptor and draftsman John Flaxman, who obtained at least one commission from Canova, was strongly influenced by his style.

Canova’s significance, in part a result of his diplomatic activities, passed beyond the boundaries of the art world and made him a figure accessible to a broad public. With the exception of Peter Paul Rubens, no other artist had ever been able to ingratiate himself and his art to so many European courts during his lifetime.

Bibliography

Boime, Albert. A Social History of Modern Art. Vol. 1 in Art in an Age of Revolution, 1750-1800. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. A brief treatment of Canova’s career and the significant political implications of his art in the light of events at the end of the eighteenth century.

Clark, Anthony M. The Age of Canova. Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, 1957. An appreciative evaluation of Canova’s work in this brief catalog for the exposition of his work held in the Museum of Rhode Island School of Design, fall, 1957.

Clifford, Timothy, et al. The “Three Graces”: Antonio Canova. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1995. Catalog, consisting primarily of illustrations, from an exhibition of Three Graces, the sculpture many critics consider Canova’s masterpiece. The exhibition was held at the National Galleries of Scotland from August 9 through October 8, 1995.

Honour, Hugh. Canova’s Theseus and the Minotaur. Reprint. London: Phaidon Press, 1969. An excellent scholarly essay explaining the complete evolution of this, the first neoclassical piece of sculpture by the artist. Bibliography, detailed notes, and black-and-white reproductions.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, et al. The Age of Neoclassicism. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1972. A comprehensive catalog for the fourteenth exhibition of the Council of Europe housed in the Royal Academy and Victoria and Albert Museum, fall, 1972. Includes eleven essays on seminal aspects of neoclassical culture, ideas, and specific art forms; bibliographical outlines and historical sketches of each artist; and plates.

Johns, Christopher M. S. Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Examines how patrons, the patronage system, and politics affected Canova’s choice of subjects and methods of working. Johns describes how Canova created sculpture and painting that allowed him to maintain his political and personal integrity, without using his art in the service of the state.

Licht, Fred. Canova. Photographs by David Finn. New York: Abbeville Press, 1983. This elaborate and handsome volume, the only major recent work in English, presents Canova’s sculpture by means of photographic and textual interpretation. More than three hundred color and black-and-white photographs sensitively convey both the grandeur and delicacy of Canova’s sculpture. Contains detailed analyses on individual works. Epilogue, notes, chronology, and an excellent bibliography.

Praz, Mario. On Neoclassicism. Translated by Angus Davidson. London: Thames and Hudson, 1969. Chapter 6 is an analytical review of the predominantly adverse criticism accompanied by reassessment of Canova’s art within the larger context of the aesthetics of neoclassicism.