Antonio Canova was called "the supreme minister of beauty " and "a unique and truly divine man " by contemporaries and was considered the greatest sculptor of his time. Despite his lasting reputation as a champion of Neoclassicism, Canova's earliest works displayed a late Baroque or Rococo sensibility that was appealing to his first patrons, nobility from his native Venice.

During his first and second visits to Rome in 1779 and 1781, Canova reached a turning point. He studied antiquities, visited the grand studios of the Roman restorers Bartolomeo Cavaceppi and Francesco Antonio Franzoni, and came under the influence of the English Neoclassicist Gavin Hamilton. In a competition organized by the Venetian aristocrat Don Abbondio Rezzonico, Canova produced his statuette of Apollo Crowning Himself, a work inspired by ancient art of a physically idealized and emotionally detached figure.

Apollo Crowning Himself

This work came to define the Neoclassical style. Apollo's nudity, his broad, muscular chest, and his relaxed, balanced pose all recall famous antique representations of the god. But while sculptor Antonio Canova clearly emulated several antiques, his Apollo is not a copy of an already existing statue. I offer prints and posters of this statue in my online store.

The success of the Apollo enabled the young sculptor to obtain a block of marble for his next work on a large scale, Theseus and the Minotaur, which helped establish his reputation. From the moment of its completion, it was the talk of Rome. From then until his death, Canova's renown grew throughout Europe.

In Antonio Canova's hands the stone yielded brilliant effects, both pristine and sensual, fulfilling the notions of a classical past embraced by his contemporaries. In his statue, Perseus Triumphant, Perseus stands holding up the severed head of the snake-haired gorgon Medusa, the sight of which will turn anyone into stone for gazing on it. The pose vividly recalls the Apollo Belvedere, the work of antiquity most admired in Canova's era.

Perseus Triumphant

The first version of the Perseus was acquired by Pope Pius VII as a replacement for the Apollo itself, which Napoleon had removed from the Vatican and shipped to the Louvre in Paris. The Perseus was so successful that it remained as a companion to the returned Apollo when the Congress of Vienna compelled the restitution of the Napoleonic booty. The Museum's version was purchased from Canova by the Polish countess Valeria Tarnowska. Fine art prints of this statue are available.

Theseus Fights the Centaur

In his later version of the Theseus myth, Antonio Canova shows a scene of turbulent struggle. Theseus raises his club in his right hand ready to strike, while already kneeling on the chest of the centaur, who is arched backwards and lying on the ground. The dominant shape of the design is a large triangle formed of Theseus's right foot, the centaur's left hand propping himself up, and the helmet as the apex. Although Antonio Canova's group resembles the Laocoön group of Antiquity in its expression of pathos and in the presentation of strain in a duel, the rhetorical and scholarly elements dominate in Canova's style, and it was on these that academic tradition would later be based.