for the painting’s palette, its singular story begins
to emerge more clearly (compared to a certain
obscurity in those verses) in the pages devoted to it
in prose. Tadini turns to the painting after another
almost contemporary picture by Canova entitled
Venus with a Faun that came a few years after his
Venus with a Mirror which was painted in c. 1787
and which is likely to be his first serious painting.
Missirini tells us:
In questo testo, significativo anche per il rilievo dato
anche ai dipinti oltre che naturalmente alle sculture,
alla tavola viene dedicato un sonetto intitolato
Ritratto del Giorgione:
“È desso, al pieno viso, ed al loquace
Guardo, alle gote che di rose infiora:
Di tele in lui l’animator verace
Scorger ben dei cui Castelfranco onora,
“[…] and feeling in his soul the strength and
the capability for colour, he said that he could
more easily paint than sculpt, and he wished to put
himself to the test. Whence he began initially to
paint a model from the nude by lamplight; then
he began another, which he completed by day, in
a picture with the model representing Endymion
sleeping, and he painted him on a canvas of three
spans 15 .
This first attempt was considered very pleasing,
particularly since it was so simple to execute, and
Canova, who felt that the process adopted in that
painting was too easy, suspected that he may have
mistaken the manner of it, and so he devised a
more difficult way, which (as he himself admitted
in his last years) he subsequently had to abandon in
order to return to the simpler method.
So having taken up his brushes once more, he
painted a life-size Venus resting, and holding in
her hand a sphere in which she is mirrored; and
on finishing it, he left it and forgot about it for
years in a corner of his workshop, until on account
both of the paint which was in high colour and
the patina of the dust and the years, it had began
to take on the semblance of an old painting. So
Canova showed it to Stefano Tofanelli, a good
painter, and to Rezzonico, and to others, and they
took it for an old painting; apart from the correct
nature of the drawing, the panel seemed to be of the
Venetian school, to which it had been attributed.
This painting was then superbly engraved by Pietro
Vitali under the title of Venus of Trastevere” 16 .
E a quelle tinte, e a quel color vivace
Cui valse un sol ad emular fin’ora,
Chi non dirà che col pennel sagace
Se stesso ei pinse, onde par vivo ancora?
Osserva: or or, dopo tanti anni e tanti,
Sembra l’opra compiuta, e pur non fia
Che di nuovo ornamento alcun si vanti.
Così con suon concorde industre coro
De’ nostri Apelli argomentar s’udia;
Canova intanto si ridea di loro” 14 .
Al di là dell’apprezzamento espresso nei riguardi
dei valori cromatici del dipinto, comincia ad
emergere la sua singolare vicenda che appare più
chiaramente, rispetto ad una certa oscurità di questi
versi, nella pagina in prosa che gli viene dedicata.
Tadini vi illustra l’opera di seguito ad un altro
quadro canoviano pressoché contemporaneo Venere
con fauno che seguiva a qualche anno di distanza la
Venere con lo specchio che, eseguita verso il 1787,
dovrebbe essere la sua prima opera di pittura di un
certo impegno. Lo sappiamo dal Missirini che ne ha
riportato la vicenda in questi termini:
“[…] e sentendosi nell’animo la forza e capacità de’
colori, dicea potersi ben dipingere più agevolmente,
che scolpire, e volle porsi alla prova. Laonde cominciò
da prima a dipingere dal nudo un’accademia al chiaro
della lucerna; indi ne incominciò altra, che poi condusse
a compimento di giorno, in un atto che l’accademia
rapresentasse un Endimione dormente, e lo ritrasse in
tela di tre palmi 15 .
Questo primo tentativo piacque specialmente
But let us return to Tadini’s text where, before
describing in prose what he had earlier called “The
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