A pen in one hand, a tablet with
his farewell to politics in the other: Antonio Canova's only
American work was that of a George Washington giving up his role
as first US president and victorious general to return to
country life.
The monument in Carrara marble did not survive, however.
Commissioned by the North Carolina Senate but destroyed in a
fire a few years after arriving in the 'New World', it has been
revived within the Frick Collection in a show curated by Xavier
Solomon with Mario Guderzo from the Gispoteca Museo Antonio
Canova in Possagno.
Only a few carbonized fragments of the statue are left, one
of which - with the artist's signature - was sent for the show
from Raleigh to New York.
The preparatory models are still in Possagno and will be
exhibited from May 23 until 23 September, including the final,
life-size one presented alone in the rotunda of the museum,
which shows the first US president dressed like a Roman general
and on the verge of leaving power.
"For Europe, used to being governed by absolute monarchs,
popes, kings and emperors, this was a revolution," Solomon said.
The statue, made 16 years after Washington's death, was
commissioned to Canova on the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson,
"the arbiter of elegance in early nineteenth-century America".
The third American president, at that point retired and
living in his palatial Monticello villa, had never met Canova or
seen his works with his own eyes but had heard of him.
"Canova was the first Italian artist famous at the
international level," Solomon said.
The last model was completed in 1818, exactly 200 years ago,
and was preceded by three drafts that are also in the Frick
Collection.
At the same time as the show will be another at the Italian
Institute of Culture with 16 tempera paintings by Canova that
are being exhibited for the first time in America and for the
first time after their restoration.
Inspired by dance, they are also from the Possagno museum.
Next door, at the consulate, there is an exhibition of Fabio
Zona photos that document the sculptures of the Veneto region
museum whose fulcrum - next to the home that Canova was born in
- is a building where the plaster casts were brought from a Rome
studio to which an extension was added in 1957 by Carlo Scarpa.
The George Washington sculpture was made in Rome. While
Canova was sculpting, his assistants and half-brother Giovanni
Battista Sartori read him texts on the American Revolution by
the historian Carlo Botta.
In Canova's eyes, Washington "was a genius that accomplished
sublime acts for his country's security and freedom".
The show also celebrates this aspect: the trans-Atlantic,
artistic and cultural ties between Italy and the US.
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