THE NAPOLEONIC HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

Canova Special Issue

“Caesar’s Friend”: Antonio Canova and Napoleon, by Susan Jaques 1

Peace 8

Lord Cawdor 10

What do you buy the man who rules everything? 11

The painting that did not go home 12

A close-up of the head from Canova’s Napoleon as Mars the Peacekeeper.

A Canova Special Issue? “CAESAR’S FRIEND” ANTONIO CANOVA AND NAPOLEON We already had some minor by Susan Jaques pieces relating to Canova. I was waiting for member Susan Jaques’ new book, The Caesar of This past summer, a new auction sures from Paris was arguably Paris, to come out, as it covers record was set for Antonio Canova Canova’s greatest challenge. Yet, Napoleon’s role in the art world. when his Bust of Peace sold for over over a decade of experience as When Susan kindly offered £UK 5.3 million. The rediscovered unofficial papal envoy had prepared this article, I thought that if we marble was among five Ideal Heads him for the important assignment. bundled it all together, we could created by the sculptor as thank At the same time Canova was have a special issue devoted to you gifts for British support in the modeling portraits of Napoleon and the great artist of the Napoleonic art restitution that followed Napo- his second wife Marie Louise, he period. leon’s defeat. was advocating on behalf of Napo- Retrieving looted Italian art trea- leon’s nemesis, Pope Pius VII.

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Their complex relationship began foothills of the Dolomites. Born Napoleon wore his fine chestnut in 1797, when then General Napo- in November 1757, Canova was hair long, cut square and covering leon Bonaparte learned that the raised by his paternal grandfather his ears in a style called “dogs neoclassical sculptor was in finan- Pisano, a stone-cutter. At eleven, ears.” In Cairo, Napoleon ordered cial straits. After France’s occupa- Canova was apprenticed to a local his soldiers to follow his example tion of Venice, the new munici- sculptor who arranged for him to and cut their hair short, Roman pality suspended Canova’s pension study drawing, painting, and sculp- style “a la Titus.” for his tribute to the naval hero ture in nearby Venice. Canova returned a few days later Angelo Emo. Eager to be portrayed Lured by Rome’s ancient ruins with clay and modelling tools. He by Europe’s most sought after and monuments, the 22-year-old was granted a handful of meetings artist, Napoleon personally wrote traveled south in 1779. Three years and five sittings with Napoleon – to Canova that August, promising later, Canova’s dramatic Theseus generous for a man who disliked to reinstate his life annuity. and the Minotaur became the talk of posing and refused to sit for painter Napoleon never made good on Rome. He was soon hired to create Jacques-Louis David. During their that promise. Later that year, when a tomb for Pope Clement XIV at informal sessions, Napoleon read he offered Canova a commission to Rome’s Church of the Holy Apos- papers and wrote dispatches from carve a relief portrait of himself for tles. For the high profile commis- an hourglass-shaped desk topped Padua, the sculptor declined, citing sion, Canova turned to the pyramid, with busts of Caesar and Hannibal. health issues and bad roads. In fact, the ancient Egyptian symbol of Napoleon also chatted with José- France’s pillaging of Italy’s master- grief and transcendence. Five years phine and Canova, reportedly pieces and its ceding of Venice later, Canova produced a second calling Canova “Caesar’s friend.” to Austria were deeply upsetting neoclassical funerary monument Keenly aware of his role as papal to the patriotic artist. “I have St. for Pope Clement XIII at St. Peter’s envoy, Canova used the meetings Mark in my heart and nothing in Basilica. to convey Rome’s economic plight the world will change me,” Canova In 1801, the Vatican acquired and the dire financial situation of the pronounced after the millennium- Canova’s monumental Perseus Papal States. According to Canova, old Venetian Republic fell to Napo- for the empty space previously he did not hold back, expressing leon. occupied by Apollo Belvedere, his concern about France’s treat- It was at Caroline and Joachim purloined for the Louvre. The ment of Venice, the “deportation” Murat’s Château de Villiers-la- acquisition launched an important of the famous horses of St. Mark’s, Garenne near Neuilly that Napoleon bond between Canova and Pius and the removal of Rome’s master- saw Canova’s Cupid and Psyche VII. In 1802, Pius named Canova works. The First Consul tolerated and Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss. Inspector General of Antiquities Canova’s complaints, a small sacri- Napoleon’s brother-in-law acquired and Fine Arts for the Papal States, fice for a superb clay portrait bust. the famous pendants after visiting with responsibility for the Vatican On one occasion, Canova returned Canova’s studio during the French and Capitoline Museums. That to the château to find Napoleon occupation of Rome in 1798. At same year, Napoleon summonsed preparing to go hunting. While that time, Canova expressed his Canova to Paris to model his waiting for him to return, Canova anti-Bonapartist sentiment in a portrait bust. Pius urged the reluc- made preliminary sketches for a letter to a friend: “I would happily tant sculptor to go, hoping he could full-length marble portrait. Napo- lose anything, even my life, if by it ease tensions with France’s bold leon expressed a strong prefer- I could help my beloved country, new leader. ence to be portrayed in his mili- for I shall call it thus till my dying In October 1802, Canova’s friend tary uniform, but Canova insisted breath.” Quatremère de Quincy presented that he be sculpted nude, like the Though the new governors of him to Napoleon and Joséphine at heroes and rulers of ancient Greece. French-controlled Rome awarded Saint-Cloud. Canova barely recog- Because of Canova’s celebrity, Canova various honors, he returned nized Napoleon who bore little Napoleon deferred to him, report- for a time to his hometown of resemblance to his earlier portraits. edly saying “We do not impose a Possagno, north of Venice in the Throughout the Italian campaign, law on Genius.” Napoleon would

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Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix, 1805-1808, Antonio Canova Borghese Gallery, Rome © Leochen66, Dreamstime.com come to regret that decision. tion of Helen caused the Trojan ence the work in the round. Pauline Back in Rome, while working on War and the flight of Aeneas, son Borghese’s love life added to the Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, of Venus, to Italy. The choice of fame of the statue, as did its nudity Canova produced Pauline Borghese Venus Victrix suited both Pauline and sensuality. When asked if she as Venus Victrix. Canova sculpted and her husband Camillo Borghese, minded posing nude in the grand Napoleon’s favorite sister reclining whose family members considered saloon at the Palazzo Borghese and on her side on an embroidered themselves descendants of Aeneas, Canova’s nearby studio, Pauline marble mattress, draped in a sheet Rome’s legendary founder. replied: “Why should I? The studio from the waist down. Resting her Using his signature technique, was heated.” right arm on two pillows, Pauline known as “the last hand,” Canova In 1808, Pauline wrote husband seductively touches the nape of her polished the surface of the finished Camillo in Turin, requesting he neck with the fingers of her right marble, giving it a deep luster and allow Venus Victrix to travel to hand. In her left hand, she holds the the lifelike texture of skin. Canova Paris. Four of Canova’s works, famous golden apple of discord. also heightened the work’s sensu- including his statue of her mother, In the fateful beauty contest, Paris ality by covering Pauline’s skin with Madame Mère Seated, were to be gave Venus the apple after judging a light layer of molten pink wax. displayed for the prestigious Salon her more beautiful than her rival Pauline’s marble mattress rested on at the Louvre, renamed the Musée goddesses. Venus introduced Paris a plaster and wooden Empire-style de Napoleon. Canova began the to the beautiful Helen, wife of bed that hid a revolving mecha- full-length seated portrait of Maria- Sparta’s Menelaus. Paris’s abduc- nism allowing viewers to experi- Letizia Ramolino shortly before

Canova Special Issue Page 3 THE NAPOLEONIC HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER accepting the commission for principled Agrippina the Elder or that both these Agrippinas good and Pauline Borghese’s sculpture. her conniving, murderous daughter bad had in common were their truly Canova based the portrait of the Agrippina the Younger? As direct terrible sons. Agrippina the Elder formidable Bonaparte matriarch descendants of Augustus through gave birth to the mad Caligula and on the Capitoline’s famous antique his first wife Scribonia, both Agrip- Agrippina the Younger gave birth to statue of Agrippina (2nd or 4th pinas were key to Rome’s dynastic the equally mad Nero. There were century AD). Canova portrayed succession. not a few critics and commentators Letizia like the ancient female In either case, argues Mary Beard, who felt that had been Canova’s figure, sitting on a curved leg chair, Canova’s Madame Mère Seated was point and that through the imperial her sandaled feet on a footstool, an insult to Napoleon. “If there was mother, Canova’s target was actu- wearing the fashionable classi- an honorable option for Madame ally Napoleon.” 1 cally inspired garb. But which Mère herself here in the model of Letizia Ramolina Bonaparte had Agrippina was Canova comparing Agrippina the Elder, there certainly a complicated relationship with Letizia Bonaparte to? The loyal, wasn’t one for Napoleon. One thing her son, the second of her eight

Letitia Ramolino Bonaparte, c.1804-07, by Antonio Canova. Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth House, UK / © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees / Bridgeman Images.

Canova Special Issue Page 4 THE NAPOLEONIC HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER surviving children. Napoleon was French control; Pius VII remained niche in the museum. It was hidden reportedly embarrassed by his under house arrest in Savona after from view by a screen of planks and pious, barely literate mother who being abducted by French troops a curtain; access was restricted to a spoke Corsican-Italian, not French. from Rome’s Quirinale in July handful of artists. After Napoleon’s Despite Napoleon’s increasing 1809. defeat, the statue was acquired by power, Letizia did not hesitate to Canova entered the elegantly the British and gifted to the Duke express her opinions, including furnished room at Fontainebleau of Wellington. The towering marble her displeasure with his treatment to find the maître d’hôtel serving still stands at the foot of the stair- of his younger brother Lucien and the imperial couple a morning case at Apsley House, Wellington’s his marriage to Joséphine. About meal of fricassee of chicken. London residence. his position as emperor, Letizia At the next sitting, Canova was After his triumphant return to prophetically declared “Let us hope surprised to find Napoleon again Rome in May 1814, Pius VII it will last!” Though she boycotted by Marie Louise’s side. In fact, entrusted Canova with restituting his coronation, Napoleon gave the emperor would never leave the treasured art works from the Letizia the title of Her Imperial sculptor alone with his young wife. Louvre. Though only about half Highness, Mother of the Emperor, Canova was struck by the contrast of the works taken from Italy were or Madame Mère, along with an between the doting husband and the returned, Canova received a hero’s annual pension of 300,000 francs First Consul of eight years before welcome in Rome. A grateful Pius and her own household. who was too impatient to sit for awarded Canova the title marquis Canova’s portrait of Pauline never his own portrait. With Napoleon of Ischia di Castro, inscribed his joined that of her mother in Paris. completely unoccupied, Canova name in the Libro d’oro or Golden The scandalous, semi-nude marble raised the touchy subject of recon- Book on the Campidoglio, and gave resembled his wife so strongly, ciliation with the Pope. But when him the highest pontifical honor, Camillo Borghese kept it hidden this angered the emperor, Canova the Order of Christ. from public view inside Turin’s changed his strategy. He appealed In 1816, Canova finished the statue Palazzo Chiablese. Canova’s instead for resources to preserve of Elisa Baciocchi ordered seven Madame Mère Seated proved a hit the monuments and churches of years earlier. With Napoleon’s at the Salon, but not with her son Florence and Rome. A week after sister off the Tuscan throne, Canova who may have understood that the Canova’s departure, Marie Louise’s replaced her head with Polyhymnia, underlying subject was himself. pregnancy was announced. muse of history, and sold the work Rather than install the marble The following April, Canova’s to Count Cesare Bianchetti of opposite his throne at the Tuileries colossal Napoleon as Mars the Bologna. In spring 1817, Canova Palace as his mother requested, Peacemaker finally arrived at the sent Marie Louise as Concordia Napoleon packed it away to the Louvre’s Salles des Hommes Illus- to Parma where France’s former palace’s storeroom. tres. Though the head was recog- empress had been installed as ruler Despite his resentment toward nizable, the buff, eleven-foot figure by the Congress of Vienna. Canova Napoleon’s policies in Italy, bore no resemblance to the short, depicted her seated, holding the Canova accepted a number of portly emperor. Canova sculpted sacrificial patera, with cornucopia commissions to sculpt other family Napoleon striding forward, looking decorating the reliefs of her throne. members after classical and myth- at a small cast copper Victory on In October 1822, Canova took ological figures, a Roman tradi- an orb in his right hand, holding ill while staying in Venice at Casa tion. In October 1810, eight years a long scepter topped by an eagle Francesconi near Piazza San Marco, after his first meeting with Napo- in his left. With the exception of a where he was a guest of his friend leon, Canova returned to France chlamys flung over the left shoulder Florian (owner of the famous Café to model a clay bust of Napoleon’s and a vine-leaf covering the geni- Florian). Canova died on October new wife, which he would use for tals, the figure was stark naked. 13, two weeks shy of his sixty-fifth Marie Louise as Concordia. This An embarrassed Napoleon birthday. Since the 1780s, Canova trip assumed a heightened sense rejected the work on the spot and had suffered from severe stomach of importance. Rome was under ordered the statue removed to a pains, the likely result of pres-

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Napoleon as Mars the Peacekeeper, 1806, Antonio Canova. © Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London.

Canova Special Issue Page 6 THE NAPOLEONIC HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER sure of a drill on his ribs during About the complex relationship, Footnotes the sculpting of Clement XIV’s Quatremère de Quincy would tomb. According to the doctor who write: “Time, however has revealed 1. Mary Beard, “The Twelve performed the autopsy, Canova to us that in him [Napoleon] there Caesars: Images of Power from died from bowel disease, thought was still something other than the Ancient Rome to Salvador Dali, to be related to this injury. After a desire to entrust the portrait of Part 4: Caesar’s Wife: Above Suspi- hero’s funeral in Venice, Canova himself to the most renowned talent cion?” The Sixtieth A.W. Mellon was buried in Possagno. A decade of that time. This kind of ambi- Lectures in the Fine Arts, National later, his remains were moved to tion, since Alexander, has not been Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., a neoclassical temple of his own lacking in any celebrated man. But April 17, 2011. design in his hometown. with Bonaparte, there was already Though he depicted many of the the expectation of that universal 2. Christopher Johns, Antonio Bonapartes, Canova never joined conquest that was the object of his Canova and the Politics of Patronage Napoleon’s propaganda team. whole life. Hence his covetousness in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Among his works are a tomb for of everything there was in each Europe (Berkeley: University of the patriotic Italian poet Alfieri country, whether masterpieces or California Press, 1998), 93. for Santa Croce in Florence and a precious objects, or men of talent funerary monument for Napoleon’s and famous subjects. What follows arch-nemesis, British admiral will make better known, in regard Horatio Nelson. And yet… Canova to Canova, the extraordinary desire kept a bust of Napoleon in his that he had to appropriate him, his bedroom until his death. works even less than his person.” 2

I mentioned earlier that Susan’s book, The Caesar of Paris, was published in December. If her name is familiar, it may be because you noticed a previous book of hers, The Empress of Art, about Catherine the Great, published in 2016.

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PEACE

As Susan Jaques mentioned in her article, Canova’s bust of Peace sold last summer for over $7.5 million at Sotheby’s. The white marble bust is almost 21 inches tall if you include the base. The bust of Peace had not been displayed in public for over two hundred years. The previous time had been when it was exhib- ited in the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1817. For a long time, it had been thought lost. The bust was symbolic of the peace established by the Great Powers after Waterloo. It was the first of Canova’s Ideal Heads (in Italian, Teste ideali) to arrive in Britain, and it caused a sensation. London had never seen anything like it. You must remember Britain had been isolated for over 20 years from the greater art world by the wars. Byron even wrote a poem to Countess Albrizzi’s Ideal Head. The Ideal Heads enshrine the sculptor’s idea of facial perfection. Canova intended them as gifts to friends and others who had helped him. None were commissioned. That gave him the freedom to create them as he wished. The first head, Helen, went to Countess Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi in 1812. It’s now in the Palazzo Albrizzi in Venice. Clio, he gave to Luise Stolberg, Countess of Albany. That’s now in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. Peace was given to his friend and British patron, Lord Cawdor. The Duke of Wellington received the head of a Dancer, which copied a statue commissioned by Empress Josephine. The bust remains in Apsley House in London, and Jose- phine’s statue is in the Hermitage in

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St. Petersburg. Castlereagh, Britain’s great diplomat, was given another bust of Helen. It is in the Londonderry collection in Northern Ireland. William Hamilton, another British diplomat, got Clio, which is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Yet another British diplomat, Sir Charles Long, was sent an Ideal Head, probably meant to be the muse Polymnia, but just possibly a portrait of Caroline Murat. That one is now in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Why did the five British men, four of them diplomats, get five out of the seven heads? They were in all in Paris in 1815. Canova was having an awful time trying to recover Italian treasures from the Louvre. At times he was in peril of being mobbed. Talleyrand and Vivant Denon, the director of the Louvre, were putting up considerable resis- tance. Lord Cawdor introduced him to these British officials who protected him and helped him to complete his mission. So in 1818 he repaid them with these princely gifts. Cawdor was a friend, and Long was big in the London art world. All of them were influential, but Canova was in no need of more commissions. He may have been acting on behalf of Pope Pius VII, and the busts might have been offi- cial or semi-official gifts from the Vatican. We have yet to see if the British government will allow Peace to be exported. It considers the bust to be a significant cultural object symbolizing the end of the Napole- onic era and the return of peace to Europe after decades of conflict. It is hoping a British institution will raise the money to buy it back.

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LORD CAWDOR

Canova gave Peace to John Camp- bell, Lord Cawdor, a Scottish aris- tocrat and one of the largest British landowners. Cawdor was also an Italophile and an extravagant art collector. In 1783, the 30 year old Cawdor visited Italy. He was there for five years. In 1787 he commis- sioned from Canova the Amorino and Cupid and Psyche, now in the Louvre. But he seems to have been more than a patron, a friendship forming between the two. Eventually Cawdor had to return to his humdrum life as a British aristocrat and member for parlia- ment. He made a good marriage in 1790, but it was not enough. He had to sell the bulk of his collection in 1800. With the arrival of peace in 1814, Cawdor was soon back in Rome. He dined with Canova daily, including Christmas Day. In 1815 he recorded seeing Canova working in his studio on the Statue of Peace, a full size statue for the Russian Count Nikolai Petrovich Rumyantsev. Rumyantsev had been Tsar Alex- ander’s foreign minister until 1812, when Napoleon’s invasion derailed his attempts at detente. He wanted the statue to celebrate all the peace treaties he had negotiated. Perhaps Cawdor admired it so much that Canova decided to give him a bust based on the statue. Cawdor was a booster of the Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of John Campbell, Lord Cawdor. sculptor’s reputation in Britain. In 1814 he bought the Duke of Bedford to the studio. The Duke admired the Three Graces so much he tried to buy it. But the statue in the Victoria & Albert Museum in who introduced Canova to the was a commission from Josephine London. Josephine’s version is in British leaders who helped him in and he couldn’t have it. So Canova now in the Hermitage, sold by her Paris. So he was more than patron made another version, which is now children to the Tsar. It was Cawdor when Canova gave him Peace.

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WHAT DO YOU GIVE TO THE MAN WHO RULES EVERYTHING? by Mark Hartman

Wandering the corridors of that de Vecchis from marble, pietre Milan. While Raffaelli made the South Kensington institution, the dure, and glass micro-mosaic. It case, the clock itself was made by Victoria & Albert Museum, I saw took extraordinary skill, inspired by Breguet in Paris. an exhibit I had missed before. archaeological finds near Rome, to By 1814 the vases were at In the micro-mosaics gallery is a shape the micro-mosaic around the Malmaison. In the inventory case that relates to your interest in curve of the vase. of Josephine’s estate they are Canova. The caption in the case The clock, shaped like a triumphal described as ‘Two vases of antique says Canova, acting on behalf of arch, was the work of Giacomo form having towards their centers Pius VII, chose these vases and Raffaelli about 1804. Napoleon was mosaic pictures representing clock as gifts for Napoleon. so impressed he encouraged Raffa- fantastic subjects imitated from the The vases were made sometime elli to move closer to his own court antique.’ between 1795 and 1800 by Nicola and set up his workshop outside

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THE PAINTING THAT DID NOT GO HOME

Above is The Wedding at Cana, painting in two and rolled it up like Napoleon too well to take this as an painted in 1563 by Paolo Veronese. a carpet for transport. It was stitched order. They found a way to move it It was commissioned by the monks back together to adorn the refur- elsewhere. of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, bished great hall in his museum in In 1815 it should have been to celebrate Jesus turning water the Louvre returned to Venice. Canova himself into wine. The work weighs a ton But Napoleon did not like it that was Venetian. The Austrians ruled and a half, and measures almost 22 much. In 1810 he decided to use Venetia now and they deemed it too feet by 32½, truly monumental. It the hall for his wedding to Marie- large to move. The Louvre insisted hung from a wall in the monastery Louise of Austria. The Veronese it was too fragile to move again. designed by Veronese himself. painting interfered with the plans. Canova was defeated. As compen- In 1797 Napoleon needed the Napoleon ordered it to be destroyed, dation he sent the monastery the monastery as his headquarters. saying “Since it cannot be moved, Feast at the House of Simon, by Liking the painting, he had it trans- burn it.” Charles Le Brun. So Cana remains ported to Paris. His men cut the The curators of the Louvre knew in the Louvre today.

© Copyright 2018 the Napoleonic Historical Society. All rights reserved. Contact: NapoleonicHistoricalSociety.org. This newsletter edited by John Brewster.

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