Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova was the leading sculptor of Neoclassicism and the most celebrated artist in Europe in his lifetime. Born in Possagno in the Venetian republic in 1757, he was orphaned young and raised by his grandfather, a stonecutter, who set him to carve. A local senator noticed his talent and paid for his training in Venice. He moved to Rome in 1780, where the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii and Winckelmann's writings had made antiquity the model. His Theseus and the Minotaur established him immediately. His technique was exacting: full-size plaster models studded with reference points, transferred to marble by assistants, with Canova doing the final surface himself. He finished flesh with pumice and abrasives to a translucency contemporaries described as living, and sometimes tinted it with a wash. The major works are Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss of 1793, the Three Graces, and the tombs of Clement XIV and Clement XIII, which replaced baroque theatricality with restrained mourning figures. He worked for Napoleon repeatedly and disliked him. He carved Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, over three metres tall and heroically nude, which the sitter thought too athletic and kept hidden; it was later bought by the British and given to Wellington. His Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix shows Napoleon's sister reclining half-nude on a couch, and scandalised Rome. After Waterloo the papacy sent him to Paris to recover the art Napoleon had looted from Italy, and he negotiated the return of a large part of it, backed by British money and pressure. He founded a school, funded pensions for artists, and built a temple at Possagno. He died in 1822.

• Lived: 1757 CE – 1822 CE
• Nationality: Italian
• Roles: sculptor