Canova in the news

There's been no great fanfare for the bicentenary of Antonio Canova's death. His sculpture is too sweet, too pretty, and, in its representation of women, sometimes too problematic for contemporary taste. Despite considerable publicity this summer, the newly rediscovered sculpture of The Recumbent Magdalene, didn't sell at auction. It was a great story. A commission for British Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, it was one of the artist's last works, which passed to Liverpool's brother in 1826 and then to public auction in 1852. Somehow its authorship became forgotten and when it was next sold in 1938, it was simply 'a classic figure' bought to decorate a garden. A great story, but not enough to persuade someone to part with upwards of £5 million.

Looking at the sculpture you can see the problem. Images of Mary Magdalene have always tended towards the carnal, but with the bare-breasted torso, the semi-reclining posture, the swoon of the eyes and the parted lips, this wears its religious role very lightly. According to Canova she was 'almost fainting from the excessive pain of her penitence' but it feels disturbingly sexualised. Bernini's interpretations of religious ecstasy, for instance his Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, in the Alteri Chapel in San Francesco a Ripa in Rome (1671-4) would surely have been in Canova's mind. But they come swathed in writhing draperies, head covered, so that the features are almost disembodied, the expression detached from the flesh. The Magdalene, in contrast, fits better with The Sleeping Endymion Canova produced for the Duke of Devonshire at the same time. Erotic myth rather than religious image.

In many ways, The Recumbent Magdalene gives the wrong impression of Canova, who spent much of his career producing cool, precise Neoclassicism. Works like the Three Graces (1814-17) idealise Beauty as asexual perfection, a physical embodiment of intellectual and moral propriety; and others were a deliberate emulation of classical precedents. His Perseus takes the Apollo Belvedere and moves it forwards; his Theseus and the Minotaur (1782) riffs off The Boxer at Rest; his portrait of Pauline Bonaparte recasts her as Venus. This academic interest in the classical world is also deeply unfashionable and Canova's work is too easily represented as a kind of fan-fiction. 

Given this lack of interest, it is admirable that Venice in Peril have committed time and money to the conservation of Canova's memorial in Santa Maria dei Frari Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. The design is his own, originally intended as a memorial to Titian, and work was carried out by his students, who completed the project in 1827. The pyramid composition with its open doorway to death and surrounding figures had previously been used by the artist in his design for the tomb of Maria Christina of Austria. Here the figures include a sleeping Genius, a Venetian winged lion and Painting and Architecture represented as mourning women; all are positioned to draw the eye towards the central blackness. And it is the crisp formality of the pyramid with its stark, black rectangle which looks radical even today. Surprisingly pagan its Christian setting, surprisingly modern for its early 19th century date. Looking at the memorial, Canova seems less of a historical has-been, and more as someone who should have their art historical status restored.