Venus Italica

Image Collection Library 221 Bartlett Hall

Annie Sollinger Digital Image Metadata Librarian (413) 545-4978 [email protected] Neoclassicism & Antonio Canova

Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Marble, 1.53 m Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Neoclassicism & Antonio Canova (1757-1822)

John Jackson Portrait of Antonio Canova (circa 1820) Oil on canvas, 49 x 40 1/4 inches (124.5 x 102.2 cm) Yale Center for British Art “The antique Graeco-Roman statuary which stood as the norm for sculpture at the time was seen to differ from Baroque sculpture because of its untheatricality. It seemed to abjure any obvious rhetoric of address to the viewer. To take one example…” (Potts 40)

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Rome, 1647-1652 Marble, 1.53 m Architect: Gian Lorenzo Bernini Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian, 1598–1680) Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome, 1647-1652

[the ‘untheatricality’ of antique Graeco- Roman statuary]

“ …the Venus de’ Medici has a clear frontal pose, defining the direction from which it is to be viewed. Yet its look and gesture do not address themselves outwards. The gathering of the hands over the breast, the ‘pudica’ pose, while ostensibly being a gesture of self-protection, is too indeterminate to articulate at all expressively a withdrawal from the gaze of a possible intruder. This unresponsiveness and independence of any implied outside presence, the poised balance between an inward and outward directness, is echoed in the turn of the head and in the body’s overall stance” (Potts 40).

Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Marble, 1.53 m Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence “[A]n issue that came increasingly to make free-standing sculpture seem problematic by comparison with easel painting: the question of how to produce a sculpture that would set in train a viewing which undid the literal fixity and inertness of shape resulting from its being a solid thing rather than a painterly depiction” (Potts 39).

Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Marble, 1.53 m Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence “By contrast [to the “unresponsiveness and untheatricality” of the Medici Venus], in Canova’s Venus Italica there is a precision to the look, to the inward clasping of the hands, and to the bend of the body, that conveys a lively sense of the figure responding to a disturbance that has just caught its attention” (Potts 40).

Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Canova, Venere Italica (completed in 1811) Marble, 1.53 m Marble, 1.72 m Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Palazzo Pitti “In other ways too the pose has a definition absent in the antique Venus. The figure is clearly posing in the midst of striding forwards, caught in an instant of frozen attentiveness” (Potts 40).

Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Canova, Venere Italica (completed in 1811) Marble, 1.53 m Marble, 1.72 m Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Palazzo Pitti “This self-presentation has a certain theatricality, but the theatricality is ambiguous in that the viewer is subtly prevented from seeing the figure as staged for him or her. Its look is directed at right angles to the forward- facing movement of its body, so any implied positioning in relation to it is relentlessly split. Moreover, because it is displayed on a pedestal, its head raised well above eye level, it can never connect with the viewer’s gaze. Denied a stable positioning,the viewer is driven to circulate round the statue, forever slightly frustrated in the search for some single image in which the figure fully discloses itself.” (Potts 40, 42)

“fixed and contemplative” viewing “unstable and dynamic” viewing (Potts 42) (Potts 42)

Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Canova, Venere Italica (completed in 1811) Marble, 1.53 m Marble, 1.72 m Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Palazzo Pitti Peter van Lint (Flemish) (1609-1690) Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Venus de' Medici (1640) Marble, 1.53 m Black chalk, white heightening, and grey wash on blue paper Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence 16 1/2 x 10 13/16in. (41.9 x 27.4cm) “The unusual refinement and subtlety in the shaping of the surface, quite unlike that in any Graeco-Roman sculpture, also functions to activate an unstable and dynamic, rather than a fixed and contemplative, viewing. Looking closely at the sculpture, as one patently is invited to do, is to become engrossed by the vividly sensual impact of the texturing and modulation of individual surfaces, and the contrasts between them—say between the subtly varied smoothness of the flesh and the sharply incised hair…” (42). “Even within the exposed areas of the body, there are striking variations between surfaces that are almost devoid of incident, such as the expanse of chest between shoulders, and intricately shaped features like the face and hands” (Potts 42). Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Canova Canova Marble, 1.53 m Venere Italica (completed in 1811) The Hope Venus (Completed 1820) Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Marble, 1.72 m Marble, 1.77 m Palazzo Pitti Leeds City Art Gallery

Canova The Hope Venus (Completed 1820) Marble, Canova, Venere Italica (completed in 1811) 1.77 m Marble, 1.72 m Leeds City Art Gallery Palazzo Pitti

Antonio Canova, The Hope Venus, Leeds Medici Venus (c. 200 BCE) Art Gallery Marble, 1.53 m Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence “…a white body as perfect as Canova’s Venus” (Balzac)

“Indeed, the great superiority of Canova is more particularly seen in the last fine touches of art… the last minute and finishing touches are those which require the highest powers of the artist…” (Potts quoting Leopoldo Cicognara, Canova’s biographer, 43).

“Canova’s practice of enlivening the surface extended to the disputed practice of treating the flesh areas with wash to give them a slightly yellowish, more flesh-like tint. (…) the younger generation of more classically minded critics (…) went so far as to argue that these seductions were antithetical to the austere essence of sculpture” (43).

“What [Landon] and several other French critics particularly objected to was the colouristic effect of the fine finish of the marble, as well as the literal polychromy, both the tinting with wash to enhance the differences between flesh and drapery and the use of metal accessories, such as in the Hebe” (Potts 44). Canova. Hebe (Between 1800 and 1805) Marble, 1.58 m “Canova’s practice of enlivening the surface extended to the disputed practice of treating the flesh areas with wash to give them a slightly yellowish, more flesh-like tint. (…) the younger generation of more classically minded critics (…) went so far as to argue that these seductions were antithetical to the austere essence of sculpture” (43).

Canova. Hebe (Between 1800 and 1805) Marble, 1.58 m Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia

Adolph von Menzel Canova’s “Hebe” and two Putti “the failure of the statue to disclose itself properly from any one position” (49).

Canova, Hercules and Lichas, 1795-1815 Marble height: 335 cm (approx. 11’) Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome So, in his frenzy, as he wandered there, he chanced upon the trembling Lichas, crouched in the close covert of a hollow rock. Then in a savage fury he cried out, “Was it you, Lichas, brought this fatal gift? Shall you be called the author of my death?” Lichas, in terror, groveled at his feet, and begged for mercy--“Only let me live!” But seizing on him, the crazed Hero whirled him thrice and once again about his head, and hurled him, shot as by a catapult, into the waves of the Euboic Sea. Lichas was innocent but due to a big misunderstanding Hercules threw in him the sea.

While he was hanging in the air, his form was hardened; as, we know, rain drops may first be frozen by the cold air, and then change to snow, and as it falls through whirling winds may press, so twisted, into round hailstones: even so has ancient lore declared that when strong arms hurled Lichas through the mountain air through fear, his blood was curdled in his veins. No moisture left in him, he was transformed into a flint-rock. Even to this day, a low crag rising from the waves is seen Canova, Hercules and out of the deep Euboean Sea, and holds the certain outline of a human form, Lichas, 1795-1815 so surely traced, the wary sailors fear Marble height: 335 cm to tread upon it, thinking it has life, and they have called it Lichas ever since. (approx. 11’) Galleria d’Arte Ovid, IX:211 Metamorphoses Moderna, Rome “Seen close to, the pose does become significantly less stable than it seems from the clear image presented at a distance. Hercules is gripping Lichas to swing him round his head, not to fling him directly forwards onto the ground. While the bulk of Hercules’ body is caught up in an emphatic sidewards movement, the action of his arms and the bent curve of Lichas’ body define an arched motion which cuts across this axis” (49). “The much more self-consciously formal work for David Smith, for example, sets up a similar tension between the flattened profile shape cut into space that one sees from afar and the complex internal accents that come into view and prise this shape open as one gets closer and moves around it” (49).

David Smith, Cubi VII, 1963 “A vivid rendering of surface also comes into play at close quarters […]. […] each exerting a libidinally charged fascination that can become detached from the impression made by the main action. […] experience of the statue’s more vivid tactile qualities. […] The violence of the overall action, then, is echoed in tactile rips and tears that interrupt and punctuate one’s viewing […]” (49).

“Here we have a complex intertwining of figures that refuses even the provisional stability of outline that the principal view of a statue such as the Three Graces offers” (Potts 50).

Antonio Canova (1757-1822) Psyche and Eros, 1793 Marble, 155 x 168 cm, Musée du Louvre

Carl Ludwig Fernow, On the sculptor Canova and his works (1806): “[O]ne can never arrive at a satisfying view of the work, from whichever side one looks at the group. One has to leap around it, looking at it now from above, now from below, getting lost in the individual partial views, without ever getting an impression of the whole” (quoted in Potts, p. 50). Carl Ludwig Fernow: “ Above all, this towering wings of Cupid, spreading out over the loosely arrayed group that further confuses the eye with the several gaps and openings it offers to the view” (quoted in Potts, p. 50). Carl Ludwig Fernow: “ The viewer is spared something of this trouble because the group can be turned round on its base, but one still seeks in vain for a view from which both figures’ faces can be seen simultaneously and where the expression of tenderness will converge” (quoted in Potts, p. 50).