Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova (1 November 1757 – 13 October 1822) was an Italian sculptor working in the Neoclassical style, best known for his works in marble. He is frequently considered the foremost artist of the Neoclassical movement, and his sculptures drew from both the Baroque tradition and the classical revival. Critics have noted that his work managed to sidestep the excessive drama of Baroque art as well as the stiff, emotionless quality sometimes found in classical revival pieces.

Canova was born in Possagno, a town in the Venetian Republic, to Pietro Canova, a stonecutter, and Angela Zardo Fantolin. After his father died in 1761, his mother remarried the following year. In 1762, he went to live with his paternal grandfather, Pasino Canova, a stonemason who ran a workshop specializing in late Baroque altars, statues, and low reliefs. Pasino introduced him to sculpting. By the time he was nine, Canova was making clay models and carving marble; two small shrines he made from Carrara marble at that age still survive. He then worked steadily under his grandfather.

In 1770, Canova began a two-year apprenticeship with Giuseppe Bernardi, known as Torretto, followed by training under Giovanni Ferrari. He then entered the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, where he won several prizes. Local monks gave him his first workshop in a monastery. Senator Giovanni Falier commissioned statues of Orpheus and Eurydice for his garden at Villa Falier in Asolo; Canova started them in 1775 and finished both by 1777. These works, in a late Rococo style, were displayed at the Feast of the Ascension in Piazza San Marco and earned him his first recognition among Venice’s elite. Another early patron was the abate Filippo Farsetti, whose collection at Ca' Farsetti on the Grand Canal Canova often visited.

In 1779, Canova opened his own studio at Calle Del Traghetto in S. Maurizio. Procurator Pietro Vettor Pisani then commissioned his first marble statue, Daedalus and Icarus. It was a hit at the annual art fair, and Canova received 100 gold zecchini for it. The base of the statue shows Daedalus’s tools scattered around, a deliberate reference to Sculpture itself, and it is thought that Daedalus’s face is a portrait of Canova’s grandfather Pasino.

Canova reached Rome on 28 December 1780. Before leaving Venice, his friends had secured him a three-year pension of three hundred ducats from the Venetian Senate. In Rome, he studied and sketched the works of Michelangelo. In 1781, the Venetian ambassador to Rome, Girolamo Zulian, hired him to create Theseus and the Minotaur. Zulian was key to Canova’s rise, turning rooms in his palace into a studio and backing him despite early critics. The finished piece shows Theseus sitting on the dead Minotaur; viewers initially thought it was a copy of an ancient Greek original and were surprised to learn it was modern. It now belongs to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

From 1783 to 1785, Canova designed and arranged a funerary monument for Pope Clement XIV at the Church of Santi Apostoli, completing it in 1787. This work cemented his reputation as the top living artist. In 1792, he finished another cenotaph, for Clement XIII, at St. Peter’s Basilica, carefully matching its style to the older Baroque monuments there. He began a funerary monument for Titian in 1790 but abandoned it by 1795. That same year, he painted more actively. Canova usually refused to restore sculptures, but in 1794 he made an exception for Zulian, restoring several pieces Zulian had moved from Rome to Venice.

The next decade was highly productive. Canova started works including Hercules and Lichas, Cupid and Psyche, Hebe, the Tomb of Duchess Maria Christina of Saxony-Teschen, and The Penitent Magdalene. In 1797 he traveled to Vienna, but returned to Possagno in 1798 for a year.

By 1800, Canova was the most famous artist in Europe. He actively promoted his reputation by publishing engravings of his works and having marble copies made from plaster casts in his workshop. His patrons came from across Europe—France, England, Russia, Austria, and Holland—and included royalty and prominent figures. Among them were Napoleon and his family, for whom Canova worked extensively between 1803 and 1809. His most notable pieces for them were Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker and Venus Victrix, a portrait of Pauline Bonaparte. The idea for Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker came after Canova was hired to make a bust of Napoleon in 1802. He began the statue in 1803; Napoleon wanted to be shown in a French general’s uniform, but Canova insisted on an allusion to Mars, the Roman god of war. It was finished in 1806. The statue arrived in Paris in 1811 but was never installed, nor was its bronze copy placed in the Foro Napoleonico in Milan. In 1815, the original went to the Duke of Wellington after his victory.