Canova, Antonio

Canova, Antonio (1757–1822). Italian sculptor. He was the most successful and the most influential sculptor of the Neoclassical movement, outdoing even Thorvaldsen and Flaxman in international fame and prestige and being celebrated in prose and verse by some of the leading writers of the day. Born in Possagno, near Treviso, the son of a stonemason, he was apprenticed as a boy to a local sculptor, with whom he moved to Venice in about 1770. His early work is lively and naturalistic (Daedalus and Icarus, 1779, Mus. Correr, Venice), but after he settled in Rome in 1781 his style became graver and thoroughly imbued with antique influence. Theseus and the Minotaur (1781–3, V&A, London) was his first major work in Rome, and he soon followed this with the prestigious commission for the tomb of Pope Clement XIV in SS. Apostoli (1783–7). After this Canova never looked back. He ran a large studio and worked for a galaxy of European notables, including Napoleon (who tried unsuccessfully to get him to settle in Paris), the Duke of Wellington, and Catherine the Great of Russia; his portrait of Napoleon's sister (Pauline Borghese as Venus, 1805–7, Borghese Gal., Rome) is one of his most celebrated works, a marble equivalent to J.- L. David's Madame Récamier. Canova worked much for the papal court and after the Napoleonic Wars he became Pope Pius VII's representative in recovering works of art looted by the French. He visited Paris in this role in 1815 and later in the same year he went to London to see the Elgin Marbles. On both occasions he was fêted as a celebrity. In 1816 he was created Marchese d'Ischia by the pope and soon afterwards retired to Possagno, where he built a church, known as the Temple of Canova, in which he was buried. Nearby is the house in which he was born; a sculpture gallery was added in the 1830s and this contains a large collection of his work, including examples of the paintings he occasionally produced. Canova was immensely influential and was renowned for his generosity to young sculptors. He went out of favour in the later 19th century, when—in the wake of Romanticism—his sculptures seemed cold and static, but his reputation greatly revived in the 20th century. His work, in fact, was always much more individual than that of many of his Neoclassical contemporaries and he placed great importance on the personal handling of his material.