as painter, not least on account of the bizarre
circumstances attendant upon its creation and,
above all, of its emblematic significance.
This is the picture listed in what is in effect
the most reliable catalogue of Canova’s work – the
catalogue that Cicognara added as an appendix to
the last book of his Storia della scultura and to his
Biografia di Antonio Canova – with the following
description:
Cicognara nel citato passaggio della Biografia,
alludendo a “qualche testa colorita colla semplice
rimembranza del pennello giorgionesco […] dai
più creduta di antico veneziano maestro” si poteva
riferire ai dipinti che recano questa impronta e
uniti dal destino comune di essere stati dati in dono
dallo stesso Canova a personaggi eminenti, come
appunto l’Ezzelino del 1793, regalato al cardinale
Ercole Consalvi, uomo colto, amante delle arti ed
influente Segretario di Stato del Pontefice Pio VII,
la Testa di Crociato (Nantes, Musée des Beaux-
Arts) (fig. 4), sempre del 1793, donata a François
Cacault, ambasciatore francese a Roma e appunto
il nostro Autoritratto di Giorgione. Tra queste tre
opere circola come un’aria comune, nell’ intento
di confrontarsi con Giorgione ed in particolare
con un dipinto celebre, ricordato dal Vasari in
casa del patriarca Grimani, cioè l’Autoritratto oggi
conservato presso lo Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum
di Braunschweig (fig. 5). Opera dall’affascinante
storia collezionistica e ben conosciuta attraverso
“Ideal half-figure larger than life, entitled
Giorgione, a gift to Senator Rezzonico. Now owned
by Sig. Cav. Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi”.
The painting under discussion in this paper is
just that: an idealised, half-figure portrait exactly
72.5 by 64.0 cm, painted in oil on wood and
enclosed in a magnificent original carved and
gilded frame made in Rome 11 and likely to have
been commissioned by Roman Senator Abbondio
Rezzonico (fig. 3), Canova’s great protector and
patron, and the recipient of the painting as a
personal gift from Canova himself 12 .
In alluding in the above passage in the Biografia
to “some coloured head displaying the mere ghost
of Giorgione’s brushwork […] thought by the most
intelligent to be truly the work of that Venetian old
master”, Cicognara may well have been referring
to the paintings bearing that mark and sharing
the common fate of having been given as gifts to
eminent figures by Canova himself, for example
the Ezzelino painted in 1793 which he offered as a
gift to Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, a man of culture,
connoisseur of the arts and influential Secretary
of State to Pope Pius VII, the Head of a Crusader
(Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts) (fig. 4), also painted
in 1793 and offered as a gift to François Cacault,
the French Ambassador in Rome, or to our own
Self-portrait of Giorgione. These three works share a
common air, betraying the artist’s intent to pit his
skill against Giorgione’s, and in particular against a
celebrated painting mentioned by Vasari as being
in the home of the Patriarch Grimani, namely the
Self-portrait which now hangs in the Herzog Anton
Ulrich Museum in Brunswick (fig. 5). The painting
4. ANTONIO CANOVA, Testa di Crociato, 1793. Nantes,
Musée des Beaux-Arts | ANTONIO CANOVA, Head of a
Crusader, 1793. Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts
18