Canova's Colossal Horse to be Restored After 50 Years in Storage

The Colossal Horse by Antonio Canova, a plaster model created between 1819 and 1821 for an equestrian statue of King Ferdinand I of Naples, will be restored and reassembled after being dismembered and abandoned in storage for over fifty years. The work, completed only for the animal part due to Canova's death in 1822, was painted bronze-colored per his wish. Donated to the Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa in 1849 by his brother Giambattista Sartori Canova, it survived the 1945 bombings intact but was cut into pieces in the 1960s during a renovation of the Salone Canova. Only the head remained on display. The restoration project, promoted by the museum and the municipality, is described by director Barbara Guidi as one of the most spectacular and relevant recovery interventions of Italian artistic heritage in recent years. The process will be documented via video and live streams. Concurrently, a dossier exhibition at the Gypsotheca in Possagno (until June 21) focuses on Canova's early masterpiece Theseus on the Minotaur (1783), marking the transition from Baroque to Neoclassicism. In Padua, the Museo Diocesano hosts (until June 8) the rediscovered marble cinerary urn of Countess Louise von Callenberg (1803-1807), previously thought destroyed in the March 1944 bombings, found in the parish of the Eremitani during a survey of Canova's works in Veneto.