In 1820, the preeminent neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova completed a marble sculpture of George Washington that divided many viewers. Dressed as a Roman emperor, the over life-sized, seated Washington appears middle-aged, relaxed, and confident as he contemplates what he’s written on the tablet he holds.
Canova inscribed “To the Great Nation of the United States of America” on the bottom of the sculpture.
Thomas Jefferson had suggested that Canova, an Italian, create the work because he deemed no American sculptor capable; however, not everyone agreed with that sentiment. When the marble first came to the Hall of the Senate in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Dec. 24, 1821, opinions differed. The Raleigh Register viewed it as “Doubtless the best specimen of the fine arts in the United States,” while American historian R.D.W. Connor, in his 1910 history of the sculpture, wrote that some viewers accused Canova of “Romanizing the American general, declaring it to be a better statue of Julius Caesar than of George Washington.”
To gain Washington’s likeness, Canova used a bust that Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi had created from life. According to The Frick Collection website, while Canova carved Washington, he had assistants and his half-brother read aloud a history of the American Revolution. Canova later wrote of the first president that he was “the immortal Washington ... the genius who has performed such sublime deeds, for the safety and liberty of his country.”
To understand why Canova chose to create his Washington in a seated position, we need to look at his sculpture “Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker,” explains art lecturer Christina Ferando in her talk on Canova for The Frick Collection. He depicted a standing, nude Napoleon triumphantly holding a statue of Nike, the goddess of victory. But Canova couldn’t design a similar monumental work for his Washington piece because the display space available was not large enough; the room’s ceiling was too low to effectively show the sculpture’s grandeur. In addition, he knew that Americans would be offended by a nude Washington, so he clothed him.
Reviving the Ancient Greek Heritage of Sculpture
Canova (1757–1822) created his Washington piece at the end of an illustrious career. He’d worked for popes, European royals, aristocrats, and politicians, including Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, and Catherine the Great. Canova worked at a time of great discovery: Archaeologists had begun excavating ancient sites in Rome and then in Greece.
Early in his career, Canova became known for reviving the ancient Greek heritage of sculpture. Some, at the time, even called him the modern Phidias (circa 480–430 B.C.). Equating Canova to the ancient Greek sculptor was a grand gesture, and Canova would have been flattered by the comparison, as he believed “the works of Phidias are truly flesh and blood, like beautiful nature itself,” according to Jane Martineau and Andrew Robinson in their book “The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century.”
According to legend, only Phidias had seen the exact image of the gods, which he imparted to man. Phidias oversaw the Parthenon’s complete sculptural design, making several important sculptures for the temple, such as his now lost 38-foot-high “Athena Parthenos” made in gold and ivory that held Nike in her hand. Similarly, Canova depicted Napoleon holding Nike in his work “Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker.”
In 1779, when he was in his early 20s, Canova finished a sculpture of the ancient Greek mythical inventor, architect, and sculptor Daedalus and his son Icarus, titled “Daedalus and Icarus.” The work shows Canova’s Baroque style before he went to Rome; he later became known for his neoclassical works.
In this work, we can see Daedalus carefully fashioning wings on his son by binding feathers to his back with wax. Daedalus made wings for himself too, and the pair used their wings to fly, fleeing the clutches of King Minos. Famously, Icarus died. His father warned him not to fly too high, yet he did. Icarus’s bravado enticed him to fly closer to the sun, which then melted the wax on his makeshift wings, and he fell into the sea and drowned.
Daedalus and Icarus fled from King Minos after Daedalus had a hand in saving the life of the young Athenian prince Theseus by giving Theseus’s beloved, Minos’s daughter Ariadne, the secret to escape the labyrinth of the dreaded Minotaur. The Minotaur had the body of a man and the head of a bull. Theseus entered the labyrinth, offering himself as the Minotaur’s sacrifice.
In his neoclassical sculpture “Theseus and the Minotaur,” Canova chose to depict Theseus towering over the Minotaur he’d just slain. The work represents the contemplative mind (Theseus) triumphant over the material body (the dead Minotaur), scholar David Bindman said in his Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art in 2015.
Many people who saw “Theseus and the Minotaur'' couldn’t quite believe it was an original work by Canova rather than a copy of an ancient Greek sculpture. It was this work and his first papal commission in Rome, Pope Clement XIV’s tomb (completed 1787) in the Santi Dodici Apostoli basilica, that cemented Canova’s fame across Europe.
At the height of his fame, Canova created his best-known works, including “The Three Graces,” “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss,” and “Pauline Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victorious.”
To Color or Not
For centuries, the pure white marble statue was the quintessential image of ancient sculpture. The idea of uncolored ancient sculpture arose during the late Italian Renaissance, when the sculptures fit the artists’ ideal, as Vinzenz Brinkmann explains in a video on the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection website. Brinkmann is the head of the department of antiquity at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. For 40 years, his team has been researching ancient artists’ use of color. (This is explored in The Metropolitan Museum of Arts’ current exhibition “Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color.”)White had long symbolized light and godliness. Using lighter or white marble for the face or parts of the body may have been “one way of representing gods or god-like emperors, differentiating them from mortals or their bodies from the clothes they might be wearing,” scholar David Bindman explained in his talk.
During the 18th century, archaeologists unearthed ancient Roman—and then ancient Greek—artifacts with traces of paint. Despite this discovery, the myth of uncolored ancient art persisted. Even in the 20th century when researchers used science to confirm that color was used on ancient statues, the idea of ancient sculpture being white still reigned.
Yet what’s particularly fascinating about Canova is how he finished his works by reintroducing color and gilding (dorures) as the ancients once did. Bindman noted that Canova had actually seen colored pigments on the surface of ancient sculptures. Canova’s friend, archaeology enthusiast Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, was one of the first to note that the ancient Greeks once applied color to their sculpture and architecture.
Admired by Design
Many museums and art galleries were founded during Canova’s lifetime, and he was one of the first to create works solely for museum display rather than for architectural settings.Canova made the designs for the sculptures, and his workshop assistants created the initial figures, leaving the final finishing touches for their master to perfect. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London website, the Duke of Bedford described “The Three Graces” as “unsurpassed by any modern specimen of the art of sculpture,” and noted “The morbidezza,–that look of living softness given to the surface of the marble, which appears as if it would yield to the touch.”
When Canova designed those works, he considered every aspect and viewing angle. For example, he’d design architecture to house a work, control how the piece would be lit, and even alter existing architecture to ensure that his sculptures were seen in the best possible way.
Today, we’re used to seeing museum artworks from afar—behind glass, a security rope, or from below at statues placed on pedestals. Art lovers in Canova’s time viewed art differently. They were allowed to interact with the sculptures. They could touch and sometimes even rotate them. Viewers could turn Canova’s sculpture “Cupid and Psyche” 360 degrees via a small metal handle in the base, Ferando explains in her talk for The Frick Collection. Viewers could also rotate some of Canova’s sculpture groupings. The two wrestlers in his “Fight Between Creugas and Damoxenos” could be individually rotated 180 degrees, which meant that they still made visual sense as a pair. If he allowed them to be rotated 360 degrees, one could be facing the other way and not fighting the other.
In Light of Washington
When Canova’s George Washington sculpture was unveiled in Raleigh, a newspaper commented: “Even the celebrated Statues of the Apollo of Belvidere [sic] and the Venus of Medici have their blemishes, but the Statue of Washington, like Washington himself, is without a stain or spot.”Today, we cannot see Canova’s original marble sculpture of George Washington because fire destroyed it in 1831. But just as we can sometimes see ancient Greek sculptures only through ancient Roman copies or plaster casts, visitors can see a plaster cast replica of Canova’s model for the work, as well as a 1970 marble copy.
Canova’s George Washington sculpture summarizes the artist’s approach to making great neoclassical art. He kept the essence of what he believed was the ancient Greek tradition of sculpture—the color, form, and accessories—while staying true to contemporary sensibilities.
