The Three Graces, with the Venus de Milo and the bust of Nefertiti, is perhaps the most famous sculptural group in the world. And it doesn't matter if not everyone knows that it is the work of Antonio Canova and that the three young beauties immortalized by him are daughters of Zeus and respond to the name of Aglaia, Euphrosine and Talia, companions of Venus, and who symbolize, respectively, the splendour, joy and prosperity.
Canova interpreted them in two very similar specimens. The first, now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, was commissioned by Josephine de Beauharnais, Napoleon's wife at the time; the second to the Duke of Bedford who, seeing the plaster that the sculptor kept in his Roman atelier, begged him to create another example in marble for him. Canova resumed the model, making small changes and, as if to delay the moment of detachment from the work, personally accompanied it to the new English home. Today that magnificent marble is equally divided, seven years each, by the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Exactly two centuries have passed since the beginning of those events: the original plaster model of the Graces is in fact dated 1813. In these two centuries the fame of Canova's three beauties has become universal. The sinuosity of the female forms, the delicacy and softness as well as the refined smoothness of the marble determine a play of light and shadow that fascinate anyone who admires them.
In his House-Museum, in his native Possagno, Canova left the original plaster of the first version of the Graces, the plaster on which he had worked to create his masterpiece. The smoothness of the final marble was here recreated by a beeswax patina. The chalk taken from the English Graces also arrived in Possagno, as a document to be kept in perennial memory of the great sculptor's art.
Grace and violence do not mix. This is confirmed, if proof were needed, by the fate of Canova's two masterpieces.
The plaster casts, with other works conserved in the Gipsoteca, were hit by the cloud of rubble caused by Austro-Hungarian cannonade during the First World War, when Possagno, at the foot of Grappa, was a battle zone. Particularly serious was the damage suffered by the "English" group who saw the Graces find themselves with dramatically injured faces and busts. In the aftermath of the conflict, Stefano and Siro Serafin, caretakers and highly skilled restorers, healed much of the damage. Instead, they did not act on the Graces of Bedfod which, defaced, found their seat in the hall of the municipal council of Possagno, as a striking reminder of a terrible war for the country. The second group of Graces, restored, is exhibited in the Ala Scarpina of the Gipsoteca.
A hundred years after the outbreak of the Great War, while Europe is preparing to remember that centenary, even the "English" Graces are resurrected, rediscovering all their parts. What the Serafin didn't feel like doing is now allowed by technology.
Thanks to the collaboration of the National Galleries of Scotland, of Edinburgh, owners of the precious marble, it was possible to photograph and scan the work and thanks to electronics it was possible to recompose the missing parts with plaster of Possagno.
“If Canova had left a single fingerprint on the marble, we would find it on the restored plaster”. This was stated by Mario Guderzo Director of the Antonio Canova Museum and Gipsoteca of Possagno who, with Ugo Soragni, Region Director for Cultural Heritage, Giuseppe Pavanello, of the University of Trieste and Director of the Canoviani Study Center of Possagno, Marica Mercalli, Superintendent for Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage for the Provinces of Venice, Padua, Belluno and Treviso and Aidan Weston Lewis, of the Scottish National Gallery of Edinburgh, Guancarlo Cunial of the Gipsoteca of Possagno, members of the Scientific Committee of the exhibition. To tell of the incredible degree of perfection achieved by this technique, which had already proved itself for another plaster cast by Canova, the Dancer, also disfigured by the war, which has found arms and cymbals.
An exhibition within an exhibition is the display of crude images from Canova's plaster casts and plaster casts in the aftermath of the bombings: images courtesy of two public archives, dramatic in their desire to constitute precise documentation of a horror.
“This exhibition, says the President of the Canova Foundation, Giancarlo Galan, will be further confirmation of the centrality of Canova's heritage jealously preserved in Possagno and will underline the commitment expressed in terms of protection and enhancement of the works. What Canova wanted to leave to his land remains fundamental for the history of art, thus making it the world center of the great sculptor's art.
THANKS FROM ANTONIO CANOVA
Possagno (Tv), Antonio Canova Museum and Gipsoteca
Since December 7 2013 to 4 May 2014
