Antonio Canova, nach

Venus Italica after Antonio Canova White Carrara marble. Head reattached. H 99 cm. Italy, 19th century. Antonio Canova created the Venus Italica after 1802, presumably as a replacement for the Roman marble statue of the Venus Italica, which was transferred from the Uffizi to the Louvre by Napoleon. Canova succeeded like almost no other sculptor of his time in depicting the softness of human skin. It took him weeks and months to achieve the desired effect. A bust of the Venus Italica from 1816, i.e. from Canova's lifetime, has been in the SKD sculpture collection since 2001, inv. no. ZV 4263. The Nationalgalerie Berlin owns the Hebe from 1796, which King Friedrich Wilhelm III acquired in 1825, and a bronze version of the Venus Italica by Graux-Marly Paris, created around 1845/46. Provenance Acquired from Kunstsalon Franke in 2000. Literature Cf. Maaz (ed.), Nationalgalerie. The XIXth Century. Bestandskatalog der Skulpturen, vol. 2, Berlin 2006, no. 155 ff.