From Canova to Canova

The Galleria Borghese and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea announce a new collaboration dedicated to Antonio Canova, offering the public an exclusive opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the great master of Neoclassicism. The initiative ideally connects the two museums through the landscape of Villa Borghese and offers holders of a Galleria Borghese admission ticket a reduced-price ticket to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea on the same day, together with a seminar exploring the figurative art held in the two institutions and a special screening of Francesco Invernizzi’s 2018 documentary Canova, featuring Vittorio Sgarbi and Mario Guderzo. The screening will take place on 28 May 2025 at 6:00 p.m. at the Casa del Cinema.

Thanks to this initiative, visitors will have the opportunity to discover Canova through a comprehensive cultural experience combining direct encounters with the artworks, dialogue with experts, and an immersive cinematic narrative.

CANOVA’S MASTERPIECES IN THE TWO MUSEUMS

At the Galleria Borghese, visitors will be able to admire one of the sculptor’s greatest masterpieces: Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix (1805–1808), commissioned from Antonio Canova by Prince Camillo Borghese in 1804 and completed in 1808. The portrait celebrates the noblewoman’s ideal beauty, immortalized in a pose that is both sensual and solemn, inspired by the classical iconography of Venus. The work is an extraordinary example of Canova’s ability to transform marble into living matter, thanks to his exceptional rendering of surfaces and details, from the polished flesh tones to the soft drapery enveloping the princess’s body.

Numerous preparatory drawings for the sculpture survive, as does Canova’s original plaster model, preserved in the Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova in Possagno, which still bears the “points”—the reference marks used to transfer the sculpture into marble. We know that Canova entrusted this operation to his assistants, reserving for himself the “last touch”: the patient polishing of the surface with increasingly fine abrasives, which produced the effect of “real flesh” and was particularly enhanced when the sculpture was viewed by candlelight.

On Pauline, Canova applied acqua di rota to the marble as a finishing treatment, giving the surface greater luminosity. The rendering of the mattress is astonishing: it appears to sink softly beneath the weight of the goddess. This effect of extraordinary verisimilitude had an illustrious precedent in the mattress Bernini sculpted for the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, which had belonged to Scipione Borghese and, precisely during the years in which Pauline was being sculpted, was sent to Paris after being sold to Napoleon together with hundreds of other works. Canova, who had fiercely opposed the sale of the Borghese marbles, offers here a Neoclassical reinterpretation of it.

Hidden beneath the agrippina is the original mechanism, still functioning today, which allows the sculpture to rotate and be viewed from all 360 degrees.

At the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, visitors will instead encounter the dramatic power of Hercules and Lichas (1795–1815), a monumental sculptural group in which the power of myth is translated into a composition of extraordinary dynamism.

This was the first of the colossal statues executed by Antonio Canova. It was commissioned in 1795 by the Aragonese prince Onorato Gaetani, who was soon forced to relinquish the work due to his adverse political fortunes. Canova subsequently offered the marble to the Austrian Emperor Francis II, proposing that it be acquired to celebrate the imperial troops’ victory at Magnano in 1799; Francis II, however, declined the proposal.

It was then that the Roman financier Giovanni Torlonia decided to purchase the completed work for 18,000 scudi—a staggering price for the time. The group was highly acclaimed when presented in 1815 and was installed at Palazzo Torlonia. Today, the marble is preserved at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome.

The work is intensely expressive: the desperate face of the naïve Lichas, whose mouth seems to release a cry of pain; Hercules’ aggressive hand grasping the young man’s hair conveys the hero’s frenzied aggression and ferocity; every muscle is defined in a state of extreme tension. The tightly clinging garment encircling Hercules’ torso is only lightly indicated on the plaster model, preserved at the Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova in Possagno. Dramatic and powerful is the contrast between the hero’s colossal body and the slenderness of the mortal youth.

INFORMATION AND TICKETS

From Canova to Canova: by presenting a Galleria Borghese admission ticket, visitors can enter the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea with a reduced-price ticket costing €10. The offer is valid on the same day as the Galleria Borghese visit.

For information and details about the promotion and events:

Galleria Borghese > https://galleriaborghese.it/

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea > https://lagallerianazionale.com/

Casa del Cinema > https://www.casadelcinema.it/it/