The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting  in the Winter Palace of the Hermitage Museum features an exhibition of beautiful white marble sculptures by none other then Antonio Canova and his followers. The room was designed by Leo von Klenze in the Greek Revival style as a prelude to the museum. The walls of the room are decorated in the style of Ancient Roman paintings, with insets of paintings in the style of ancient Greece and Rome. The inlaid parquetry floors in light and dark woods further embellish this elegant gallery. The most marvelous sight in the gallery, however, are the sculptures by the Italian sculptor, Antonio Canova (1757--1822). Some of this most famous works reside in the collection of the Hermitage Museum, three being The Kiss of Cupid and Psyche c. 1794-1797 and The Three Graces c. 1812-1816, and Mary Magdalen. Four of the sculptures by Canova were acquired by TsarAlexander I (r.1801-1825) from the collection of Joséphine, some of it plundered loot given to her by her ex-husband Napoleon Bonaparte.

Antonio Canova (1757-1822) was born and died in the Republic of Venice. Both his father and grandfather were stone-cutters, and he is from a long line of men who made statues in Possagno, Italy. His grandfather introduced young Antonio to the family profession. His first sculptures in Carrara marble were executed in his grandfather’s workshop at the age of nine. He was placed under the tutelage of the master sculptor Bernardi, then Torretto, after which he worked on his own to produce Orpheus and Eurydice. Monks gave him his first workshop, a cell in a monastery, where he labored for four years while attending the academy, receiving several prizes.  His studies included anatomy, archaeology, ancient and modern history, and language. He also frequented places where he could stud ythe expressions and attitudes of performers. He completed three sculptures entitled Orpheus, Daedalus, and Icarus before his twenty-fourth birthday. Canova applied for and received a stipend from the Venetian Senate to support his new life as a sculptor in Rome. There he was able to study relics of antiquity and test his skills amongst the masters. He established his fame in Rome by producing the heroic-sized sculpture, Theseus Vanquishing the Minotaur, now in the collection of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. This masterwork defined his style as one of ‘simplicity and natural expression united with the concepts of grandeur and truth’. His next triumph was a monument in honor of Clement XIV, a project that required two years of toil, and earned him the accolade as “the first artist of modern times”.  He worked the next five years on another cenotaph, a memorial to Clement XIII, which raised his fame still higher. Next, he produced Psyche, a figure with a butterfly in her left hand, held by the wings on the right, considered to be the most faultless and classical of Canova’s works. He next created two works representing Cupid with his bride, one standing and one recumbent. At this point his reputation as a sculptor had risen to such heights that he began receiving flattering inducements from this Russian court to move to St. Petersburg. He declined these offers, although his finest works made it to the Hermitage Museum. In writing of this occurrence to a friend, he penned: “Italy is my country ... is the country and native soil of the arts. I cannot leave her; my infancy was nurtured here. If my poor talents can be useful to any other land, they must be of some utility to Italy; and ought not her claim to be preferred to all others?” During  1795-1797, he produced repetitions of previous work including the Parting of Venus and Adonis, sent to Naples. During the French Revolution, he sought obscurity in his native Possagno, retiring there and painting for about a year, returning to Rome in 1798.  He visited London where he was honored for his championship of the Elgin Marbles, which had recently been transported to England. He stayed in England where his pupils included Richard Westmacott and John Gibson. When he returned to Rome in 1816, with works that had been looted by Napoleon, the “ransomed spoils of his country’s genius”, he received many honors, including being made President of the Accademia di San Luca, the main artistic institution in Rome. Canova’s last works in the final period of his life in Rome include: a colossal statue, Religion, a group entitled Mars and Venus, the colossal figure of Pius VI, the Pietà, St. John, the recumbent Magdealen, and the colossal bust of his friend, Count Cicognara. In May, 1822, he visited Naples to superintend the construction of wax moulds for an equestrian statue of the Bourbon king Ferdinand VII. The journey injured his health, though he rallied and returned to Rome. He paid an annual visit to Posaggno, then proceeded to Venice where he died at the age of sixty-five. His disease, one that affected him from an early age, was caused by the continual use of carving tools producing a depression of the ribs. His heart was interred in a marble pyramid he had designed as a mausoleum for the painter, Titian in the church of Santa Maria Glorioso dei Frari in Venice, now a monument to Antonio Canova.

PHOTOS: Top Two: 1. Kiss of Cupid and Psyche, 1794-1797. Entered in 1926. Formerly in the Pinces Yussupov’s Collection. 2. Hebe, 1800-1805. Entered in 1815 from Empress Josephine Collection in Malmaison near Paris. Bottom Two: 1. Dancer. Entered in 1815 from Empress Josephine Collection in Malmaison near Paris. 2. The Three Graces, 1812-1816, entered in 1901 from Duke Leuchtenberg’s Collection, St. Petersburg.

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