Copying Canova
Two great videos of an old-school American sculptor copying a Canova marble. The videos are part of a National Gallery of Art exhibition of Canova’s clay sketch models. Seems like a fantastic exhibition. Canova’s marbles are so highly finished, it’s great to see his expressive little sketch models. I like Canova, a little bit to my surprise; I’m not especially interested in figurative sculpture or neo-classicism, but I’ve seen a lot of sculpture as I tour around Europe and if I find myself thinking, ‘Hey that sculpture’s really good’, there’s a good chance it will turn out to be by Canova. I especially love the Canova sculpture that Scarpa sited at Castelvecchio, and Scarpa’s room at the Canova museum in Possagno is one of the best sculpture spaces in Europe, but I’ve seen a few others here and there and they have something about them that makes them better than all the other stiff European marbles. The sketch models look great too, and the exhibition seems worth a visit for anyone remotely close to the national gallery.
The exhibition page is here. There’s a great interview with the curator on Modern Art Notes Podcast.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2023 at 8:39 pm and is filed under sculpture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
