Livio Pestilli's Canova and His World Reassesses the Sculptor Two Centuries After His Death

Livio Pestilli's Canova and His World, published by Lund Humphries on 3 March, gathers essays distilling the current state of scholarship on Antonio Canova (1757-1822). The 240-page, 169-colour-illustration volume, priced at £60 in hardback, examines the critical debate that surrounded Canova during his lifetime, the technical problems his marble sculptures posed, and his campaign to recover art looted under Napoleon. Canova's reputation collapsed soon after his 1822 death: Gustav Waagen judged The Three Graces (1812-16) 'pretty but insipid', and John Pope-Hennessy later described the sculptor as 'fettered by the shackles of good taste'. A revival owes much to the late Hugh Honour and to exhibitions from the Museo Correr's 1992 show onward, including recent presentations in Rome, Milan and Chicago. Byron had declared in 1818 that Europe and the world had 'but one Canova'. Rivalry with Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) divided opinion, while Antoine Quatremère de Quincy built Canova's international reputation even as he detected 'a classical Bernini' in Cupid and Psyche Embracing (1787-93). Canova's papal tomb for Clement XIV, finished in 1787 at the Church of Santi Apostoli in Rome, applied Winckelmann's 'noble simplicity and quiet grandeur'. After Waterloo in 1815 his diplomacy persuaded the British to back restitution, and roughly half the stolen artefacts returned to the papacy. Bruce Boucher reviewed the book.