Portrait of Antonio Canova (1807)

Inscribed on the top: “Eques Canova Sculptor 1807”;

on the back, partially legible inscription: “Donò […] Mazzola […] Martinengo”

Provenance: Milan, private collection; collezione Martinengo

Note: another version of the portrait, signed 1806, is preserved in Rome, at the Galleria Borghese

The universal fame of Canova, an artist who, according to his contemporaries, had revolutionised sculpture and the arts of his time in general, had immediately translated into a figurative fortune not only for his work, but also for the artist’s own image. Many of his colleagues, both painters and sculptors, portrayed him in the most diverse registers, from the portrait of the artist as creator and at work in his studio (Domenico Conti Bazzani, Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Angelica Kauffmann), to the allegorical (Giovanni Ceccarini), to the celebratory role of official artist (Giovanni Battista Lampi, John Jackson, Pietro Benvenuti), and finally to the friendly one (Andrea Appiani, Giuseppe Bossi, Thomas Lawrence). As a result, the power of his inventiveness, the ability to be an interlocutor for the powerful individuals of the time thanks to his artistic and moral authority, and the qualities of the man, entrusted with the psychological study of the image could be highlighted time and again[1].

One of the most charming and pleasant portraits is that dedicated to him in 1806 by Gaspare Landi, a spontaneous and informal portrait of a man, who enjoyed immediate success. Since his debut in Rome in the ninth decade of the eighteenth century, the painter from Piacenza had sought his figurative models more in the works of Canova than in those of contemporary painters. The artist had even cultivated the ambition of creating an equivalent to Canova’s example in painting, both in the sentimental character of the graceful subjects and in the technique adopted, based on touch painting and glazing. Such a technique was considered by Landi to be a laborious practice, inspired by a special “touch”, to the point of being compared to Canova’s “last hand”, that is, the technique that allowed the sculptor to transform the stone appearance of marble to achieve effects of a vital softness[2]. This theoretical assumption had translated into competing pictorial endeavours with his friend’s subjects, from Ebe coppiera dell’aquila di Giove (Hebe cupbearer for Jupiter’s Eagle) – (Brescia, Civic Museums of Art, and History), to the painted cast of the group Amore e Psiche che si abbracciano (Cupid and Psyche embracing) – (Venice, Museo Correr).

As a result, the portrait of the friend, which we can consider particularly heartfelt by virtue of this emulation between painting and sculpture, to the point of also being realized as a pendant with his Autoritratto (Self-Portrait) – (Rome, Galleria Borghese)[3], had to be charged with a poetic and programmatic intensity, which also evoked the terse immediacy of Autoritratto come Pittore (Self-Portrait as a Painter) painted by Canova himself years before (Florence, Uffizi Gallery).

Anton Raphael Mengs, alongside the official set portraits, had succeeded in defining a typology of moral portraits, unadorned, with an abstract background and non-redundant garments, concentrated on the face so as to reveal that of the character, the expressive typical characteristics, the psychological and above all, moral dimension of the individual portrayed. Inspired by these comparisons, Landi had been able to distinguish himself in this type of ethical and intellectual portrait as well, which had to appear as an imprint painting, almost like a “talking” portrait, with the character represented in the act of uttering words towards the other interlocutor.

Canova’s portrait appears to embody these characteristics in an exemplary way. The three-quarter bust stands out against the neutral background, in a dark suit with a lively illuminated face, painted with parted lips as if speaking, as well as having vibrant and expressive eyes. In addition to the physical appearance, the image conveys the character of Canova as well. A personality that the sources of the time unanimously described as affable, open, cordial, kind and generous. The artist’s iconography precedes here to the use of a wig that would revitalize him in the following years, a habit that Ugo Foscolo did not have to forgive him for.

The portrait already enjoyed great critical acclaim at the time and has continued to do so until recent times. Giuseppe Antonio Guattani had reviewed it in 1807, praising the sophistication of his patron, Count Antonio Pezzoli of Bergamo (1806, Bergamo, Accademia Carrara), who had been able to secure the works of the main artists of the times, from Landi to Angelica Kauffman, from Vincenzo Camuccini to Pietro Benvenuti:

“We do not know that until now Cav. Canova has had in painting an image which most resembles him. Everything is found in his suit and the demeanour itself. As for the face, its significant characteristic parts are expressed with the brush, such as the forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, mouth, chin, and his hair. This is not all: the strength of the colour with the magic of the chiaroscuro make (what is important to know) is the spirituality of the soul, that delicate sentiment that he puts into his creations, penetrating through to the physical characteristics. Without this, the work would be mechanical, the portrait would not be a portrait, and the artist who painted it would be just a craftsman. But Rome saw it and decided to give the due praises to the masterful brush of Mr. Cav. Landi: becomes superfluous to resonate them with ours.”[4]

An example of Landi’s uninterrupted success, at least as a portrait painter even during the long season of the “academia’s misfortune” (according to Sandra Pinto’s definition), is the interpretation of this extraordinary portrait of Canova given by Michele Rigillo in 1932. After speaking of the refinement of the design and the warmth of the tone, he continued:

“What seduces in this is the soul that the painter has conveyed in the eyes, the expressive strength, the cut of the mouth and the skilful graduated nuances of that background, from which the figure of a living face leaps out in bold realism. We will never forget the relief of this superb representation of a human face: it looks more like a statue than that of a painting. […] Landi is one of the most virtuous bearers of this extraordinary ability of prosopographical painting of the time, he wanted to succeed even with the portrait of Canova, the sculptor who must have been enthusiastic about this projective plastic of neo-classical painting, because it united in a single expressive ideal the two associated arts, which nineteenth-century academicism had not yet completely removed from the influence of eighteenth-century classical realism.

It is said that when Canova saw this beautiful portrait for the first time, he jokingly said to his friends: “There, now I will never die…”. Indeed, this is Canova’s “talking portrait” par excellence. The energetic and witty head seems to emerge from the canvas as it would from a window, with those bright eyes under those eyebrows that are so powerfully accentuated, as if in a habitual effort of perception. Additionally, with a nose in a perfect line of objectivity, with those lips that seem to open speak, with hair that has a tone coloured between grey and silver, which we have not seen in any portrait, ancient or modern, so finely experienced and reproduced.”[5]

As already mentioned, until then two examples of this portrait were known. One commissioned by Count Pezzoli of Bergamo, and the other which remained with the artist together with Autoritratto (Self-Portrait), inherited by his son and therefore appeared at the collection of Baron Otto Messinger, who was to donate both works to Galleria Borghese in 1919. In addition to these two specimens, which are similar but not identical, varying mainly in the clothing, there is the one presented here, dated 1807, which appears similar to the one in Bergamo, although modified in the details of the suit and hair to the point of constituting an independent work. This variety, together with the pictorial quality in the rendering of the touch in, for example, the hair painted with the tip of the brush, and then in the colour transition of the complexion, rendered through refined glazing, points to the quality of Landi’s autograph also for this third rediscovered version.

Stefano Grandesso

[1] Cf. La mano e il volto di Antonio Canova. Nobile semplicità Serena grandezza, Possagno 2008; Fernando Mazzocca, La Gloria di Canova, in Canova Thorvaldsen la nascita della scultura moderna, Exhibition Catalogue, Milan, Gallerie d’Italia, curated by Stefano Grandesso, Fernando Mazzocca, Milan 2019, pp. 149 ff.

[2] Cf. Stefano Grandesso, La vicenda esemplare di un pittore “neoclassico”: Gaspare Landi, Canova e l’ambiente erudito romano, in La città degli artisti nell’età di Pio VI, curated by Liliana Barroero, Stefano Susinno, “Roma moderna e contemporanea”, X, 1-2, 2002, pp. 178-203.

[3] Cf. Stefano Grandesso, in Canova l’ideale classico tra scultura e pittura, Exhibition Catalogue (Forlì, Musei di San Domenico), curated by Sergej Androsov, Fernando Mazzocca, Antonio Paolucci, with Stefano Grandesso and Francesco Leone, Cinisello Balsamo 2009, pp. 144-145, cat. I.8. The two paintings are also published in comparison in Gaspare Landi, Exhibition Catalogue of Piacenza and Roma curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, Milano 2005, pp. 160-161.

[4] Giuseppe Antonio Guattani, “Memorie Enciclopediche Romane sulle Belle Arti, Antichità, etc.”, vol. II, p. 108.

[5] Michele Rigillo, Un pittore neo-classico dell’800 Gaspare Landi, in “Aurea Parma. Rivista di storia, letteratura ed arte”, XVI, 1932, pp. 79-71.