L’Autoritratto di Giorgione. The Self-portrait of Giorgione.
Un dipinto ritrovato di Antonio Canova A painting by Antonio Canova rediscovered
A partire dalla Venere con lo specchio (fig. 1) del
1787 e da Venere con Amore in fasce, firmato e datato
1789, sino alle Grazie e alla Carità, entrambi firmati
e datati 1799, tutti dipinti conservati nella Casa
dell’artista a Possagno, la singolare ed affascinante
attività pittorica di Canova sembra concentrarsi
tra la seconda metà degli anni ottanta e la fine
del secolo. A questa risale infatti il suo capolavoro
come pittore, lo straordinario Compianto di Cristo
che, realizzato appunto nel 1799 ma ripreso in
due momenti successivi nel 1810 e nel 1821, verrà
destinato all’altar maggiore del Tempio eretto
a Possagno alla sua gloria e per conservare i resti
mortali del grande scultore.
Rispetto a questo versante meno noto e un
po’ eccentrico della produzione canoviana, il
maggiore interprete di Canova Leopoldo Cicognara
prevedeva che sarebbe stato oggetto dell’interesse
degli studiosi come in effetti è avvenuto, anche se
poi sono rimaste molte incertezze sulla paternità di
opere a lui tradizionalmente attribuite 1 . Nel libro
settimo della sua Storia della scultura, uscita in due
successive edizioni nel 1813-1818 e nel 1824, quasi From Venus with a Mirror (fig. 1) dated 1787
and Venus with Cupid in Swaddling Clothes signed
and dated 1789 down to the Graces and Charity,
both signed and dated 1799, all of them paintings
hanging in the artist’s home in Possagno, Canova’s
singularly fascinating career as a painter seems to
fall between the second half of the 1780s and the
turn of the century. This was when he painted his
masterpiece in this field, the superb Lamentation
Over the Dead Christ, which he completed in 1799
but to which he was to return on two occasions, in
1810 and then in 1821, and which was intended
to grace the high altar in the Temple erected in
Possagno to his glory and to house his mortal
remains.
Leopoldo Cicognara, Canova’s greatest exegete,
predicted that this less well-known and somewhat
eccentric side of his output would be a source of
interest for scholars, as indeed it has been, even
though a great deal of uncertainly still surrounds the
autograph nature of works traditionally attributed
to him 1 . In the seventh volume of his History of
Sculpture, published in two successive editions in
1813–18 and in 1824 and devoted almost entirely
to Canova, Cicognara predicted that:
“Those who undertake to write Canova’s history
and the singular nature of all his studies, of all his
practices, and to speak of the circumstances of his
private life, will have a vast amount of material over
which to pick, especially if they wish to dwell at
length on all the works he painted with the style
and palette of Giorgione, on whom he seems to
have concentrated. And it will be very pleasing
to all those classes of connoisseurs and of men
of intelligence in these matters to recognise the
fertility of his poetic imagination, now published
in prints in the public domain, with which he
composed infinite groups and ideas of dancers,
of nymphs playing with cupids; and subjects of
muses, and philosophers drawn solely for study and
1. ANTONIO CANOVA, Venere con lo specchio, 1787 circa.
Possagno, Gipsoteca e Casa Canova. Per gentile concessione
di Fondazione Canova onlus - Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio
Canova di Possagno | ANTONIO CANOVA, Venus with a
mirror, c. 1787, Possagno, Gipsoteca and Casa Canova
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