Antonio Canova
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In the same way the art of Canova was a reaction against the art of the school which had preceded him — the school of the seventeenth century. But it is not necessary to go into that subject because it has received abundant, and more than abundant, literary illumination already. Suffice it to say that the initiative of the art movement of the seventeenth century was given by Michelangelo during the sixteenth, and that the kernel-idea was the emphasis of character. The public of his time, tired of the super-refined, characterless, vapid, insipid form of art produced by Raphael in his later Madonnas, welcomed the change to something more strongly impregnated with character. The tide once turned, it received an additional impetus from the clever work of Bernini which was precisely adapted to meet the taste of the day and the craving for effects which were bold, emphatic, bordering at times on the startling ; and it came to its height in the work of Bernini's successors who contributed no new ideas, but simply gave the old ones an enlarged, or, as we should now say, exaggerated, application. In the natural course of events the public at last became tired of this form of art and yearned for something new ; and it was at this psychological juncture that the classicists came forward and, with Canova as the most brilliant exponent of their ideas, gave a new direction to the art-product of Italy and indeed to that of the whole of Europe. The origin of the classic movement goes back as far as the discovery of the buried art-treasures of Pompeii and Herculaneum during the reign of Charles III of Naples in the middle of the last century. The movement was very materially helped along by the writings and teachings of two Germans, whose names afterward became familiar to every one because of their prominent connection with this effort to restore classic art to favor, — Anton Raphael Mengs and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Mengs invented the doctrine which later became the creed of the eclectic school in painting, and Winckelmann made himself the leader of the more strictly classic school which insisted upon the adoption without any reservation of the principles of art which had been practised by the Greeks." --History of Modern Italian Art (1898) by Ashton Rollins Willard |
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Antonio Canova (November 1, 1757 - October 13, 1822) was an Italian sculptor who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh. The epitome of the neoclassical style, his work marked a return to classical refinement after the theatrical excesses of Baroque sculpture.
Notable works
Among Canova's heroic compositions, his Perseus with the Head of Medusa appeared soon after his return from Germany. The moment of representation is when the hero, flushed with conquest, displays the head of the "snaky Gorgon", whilst the right hand grasps a sword of singular device. By a public decree, this fine work was placed in one of the stanze of the Vatican hitherto reserved for the most precious works of antiquity.
In 1802, at the personal request of Napoleon, Canova returned to Paris to model a bust of the first consul. The artist was entertained with munificence, and various honors were conferred upon him. The statue, which is colossal and entitled Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, was not finished till six years after. On the fall of the great emperor, Louis XVIII presented this statue to the British government, by whom it was afterwards given to the Duke of Wellington.
Palamedes, Creugas and Damoxenus, the Combat of Theseus and the Centaur, and Hercules and Lichas may close the class of heroic compositions, although the catalogue might be swelled by the enumeration of various others, such as Hector and Ajax, and the statues of George Washington (commissioned by the State of North Carolina to be displayed in its Capitol Building), King Ferdinand of Naples, and others.
Under the head of compositions of grace and elegance, the statue of Hebe takes the first place in point of date. Four times has the artist embodied in stone the goddess of youth, and each time with some variation. The last one is in the Museum of Forlì, in Italy. The only material improvement, however, is the substitution of a support more suitable to the simplicity of the art. Each of the statues is, in all its details, in expression, attitude and delicacy of finish, strikingly elegant.
The Dancing Nymphs maintain a character similar to that of the Hebe. The Three Graces and the Venus are more elevated. The Awakened Nymph is another work of uncommon beauty. The mother of Napoleon, his consort Maria Louise (as Concord), to model whom the author made a further journey to Paris in 1810, the princess Esterhazy and the muse Polymnia (Elisa Bonaparte) take their place in this class, as do the ideal heads, comprising Corinna, Sappho, Laura, Beatrice and Helen of Troy.
Of the cenotaphs and funeral monuments the most splendid is the monument to the archduchess Archduchess Maria Christina, Duchess of Teschen, consisting of nine figures.
Besides the two for the Roman Pontiffs already mentioned, there is one for Alfieri, another for Emo, a Venetian admiral, and a small model of a cenotaph for Horatio Nelson, besides a great variety of monumental relieves.
List of works
