Clemente XIII heads

Clemente XIII headsIn 1783 Canova received the commission to sculpt the funeral monument of Pope Clement XIII, to be built in the basilica of Saint Peter. His patron was the pope's nephew, Prince Abbondio Rezzonico. Canova devised a system dominated by the figure of the pope and, to a lower level, a funeral Genius, the allegory of Religion and, at the centre, in relief on the sarcophagus, Charity and Hope. The Academy preserves the monumental plaster model of the head of the pope that still shows on the surface of the face the original final waxing. The treatment of the face—in contrast with the roughness of the surface of the hair and the cope—helps to make even more powerful the meticulous analysis of the sitter. Canova realized the plaster model of the Academy in 1784-86 and began to work on the marble version from 1787. The Gipsoteca of Possagno preserves the plaster cast of the marble head of the Pope and a plaster mask. No records support with written evidence the accession of the work into the Academy, except for a note in 1882 that includes it among the gifts by the authors. (P. P.)