Sthey present in Lucca, for the first time, 12 new sculptures, traced but until now lost, by Antonio Canova; never seen before, white as snow, just as they came out of the sculptor’s Roman studio on the long journey to Venice.
Due to the integrity of their cut they appear conceived as those ideal heads to which Canova applied himself around 1810. The perfection of the execution refers to the sculptor himselfin at least two cases models for marble, in the other autograph casts “from good form” and that is from the marble heads of known works, with the desire to perpetuate their memory.
Canova’s intention, in this procedure, has an intrinsically poetic character. It is like the exposition in free hendecasyllable verses of Thanks by Ugo Foscolo. A true feeling of harmony which in the proem and the three hymns reproduces the balanced union of beauty and virtue in all creation.
It is, in fact, a “correspondence of loving senses” that unites the sculptor and the poet applied in the same years, between 1812 and 1813, to the theme of the Graces. The agreement is declared in the dedication of Foscolo’s poem to Canova.
Antonio Canova, “Italic Venus”. Until September 29th on display at the Cavallerizza in Lucca (photo by Lino Zanesco).
In the first hymn, the one to Venus, the poet invokes the Graces for «the arcane harmonious painterly melody of your beauty»: the word melody, from the musical sphere, is placed alongside the word painter, from the artistic sphere, to establish a connection between the two arts.
Likewise Like Canova, Foscolo intends to infuse eternal soul into his poetic and literary creations: «Be immortal, eternally beautiful!». It is the invitation to the Graces to spread the harmony of the world of the Gods on earth and make the lives of mortals happier, directing them towards art and distancing them from the passions and death to which nature destines them.
Harmony, like Love, is personified, and is in the highest heavens: it is the force of universal love that governs the world and which, through music and poetry, ennobles the souls of men and guides their civil life. That harmony has a divine origin is argued in the second hymn, the one to Vesta, in which it is explained as the organic and perfect agreement of the parts in the whole.
Three beautiful priestesses, representing poetry, music and dance, are witnesses of universal harmony: one plays the harp, the second brings a honeycomb as a gift – a symbol of the sweetness of poetry – and the other dances with grace and elegance, releasing a harmonious rhythm from her beautiful body, smile and mouth.
Harmony is again spoken of in the third hymn, to Atlantis, a timeless island where virtue is safeguarded from the onset of immoderate passions. Harmony moves from the world of the senses to that of the intellect; thanks to art and literature, in fact, humanity is directed towards the cult of beauty and grace, which comes from the harmony of the body’s shapes, combined with the goodness of the heart.
The Graces, divinities between heaven and earth, move to Atlantis to escape the corruption of the world: from here they return to men, protected from insidious passions with a mystical veil, in which the most sacred feelings for man are represented.
The whole poem intends, therefore, establish a synthesis between the mythical past and the present, the first dominated by the beauty of the ancients and the second agitated by wars and conflicts which the poet looks at with concern and compassion. To the tormented and disturbing historical situation in which Foscolo lived, as to the one we are in today, the poem contrasts a synthesis of serenity and balance, with a perfection of writing corresponding to the contemporary figurative experiences (Canova above all) of European Neoclassicism.
The exhibition “Antonio Canova and Neoclassicism in Lucca” will be open until September 29th
In fact, the ideal heads which here present themselves as an autonomous segment have the same meaningdetached from the Canova universe or encyclopedia of the Gypsoteca of Possagno, a satellite that is recomposed almost as a culmination of the celebrations for the second centenary of Canova’s death.
The sculptures found are part of the direction by Giovanni Battista Sartori in the transfer of the plaster casts from Canova’s studio in Rome to the spaces of Bassano and Possagno, and of others, like these, to friends.
In 1829, for example, four plaster casts of the Head of Paris were present in the Rome studio: three casts and a model. All four left with that year’s expedition because we find them in the crates. Today one cast is preserved in Possagno, two in Bassano, while the model, until now lostit is almost certainly the plaster studded with pins that is part of the group of 12 heads now resurfaced and presented here.
The collection, after this first arrival in Lucca, thanks to the contribution and project of Banca IFIS, will be able to represent Canova in the world even beyond the anniversaries.
INFO: the exhibition Antonio Canova and Neoclassicism in Lucca will be open until September 29th at the Cavallerizza di Lucca, Piazzale Verdi (contemplazioni.it).
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