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Venus with the mirror
Venus with Faun
Venus and Adonis
The Graces
Self portrait
Cupid Lubomirski
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Theseus winner of the Centaur
Love and Psyche
Theseus on the Minotaur
Dancer with hands on hips
Dancer with her finger to her chin
The surprise
The Graces and Venus dance in front of Mars
Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as the winning Venus
Portrait of Antonio Canova
Cephalus and Procris
Venus and Mars
Venus with the mirror
Venus with Faun
Venus and Adonis
The Graces
Self portrait
Cupid Lubomirski
Creugante
Theseus winner of the Centaur
Love and Psyche
Theseus on the Minotaur
Dancer with hands on hips
Dancer with her finger to her chin
The surprise
The Graces and Venus dance in front of Mars
Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as the winning Venus
Portrait of Antonio Canova
Cephalus and Procris
Venus and Mars

Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as the winning Venus

Antonio Canova

Displayed in:

Canova Museum

Canova Museum

Via A. Canova, 74, Possagno

Open now from 09:30 to 18:00

Verified profile

Sculpted from a single block of pure Carrara marble, the statue of Paolina Bonaparte as the winning Venus emerges in the center of room 1 of the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Antonio Canova had begun to deal with the work as early as 1804, commissioned by Prince Camillo Borghese. Initially her husband placed her in Palazzo Chablais in Turin and chose a purely private destination for her. It was the year of the coronation of her brother, Napoleon Bonaparte, as emperor. The sculpture of the sister was to become one of the main symbols of the political rise of the Napoleonids in Europe. Some preparatory drawings testify that the artist had studied the subject and its possible compositions for a long time. Four of these are kept in the Archive Library Museum of Bassano del Grappa. The woman, at her personal request, was represented in the pose and attitude usually dedicated to Venus, the Greek goddess of Beauty. As the famous myth tells, through a sort of competition, Paris chose the most beautiful of the goddesses by rewarding her with a golden apple, the same one that Paolina holds in her left hand. Furthermore, the body and its pose reflect some ancient compositional models, especially from the Augustan period. The woman, in fact, is languidly lying on an agrippina, which is an elongated armchair equipped with a single armrest, on which she rests her right arm. The bust is erect and completely naked, while the lower part is half covered by a light dress, which makes the woman modest and sensual at the same time and loads the statue with a strong eroticism. In fact, the atmosphere of scandal that the hypothetical naked pose in the artist's studio aroused at the time is curious. The face is idealized, perfect in its concretization, and seems to look directly at the viewer who is admiring it. The divine features raise it outside of any earthly reality: it is returned to the human dimension only thanks to the presence of the bracelet on the right wrist, the ribbon on the hair and a special pink patina that Canova applied on the epidermal parts to imitate the color of the complexion. and give it a slight semblance of life. The richly detailed cushions and sofa are given a realistic and inviting softness as a whole, while the entire structure has a mechanism that allowed it to rotate. The plaster model, due to the bombings of the war that affected a large part of the collection, was beheaded, deprived of the right hand that was resting on the cheek, the fingers of the left hand and part of the left foot. In the autumn of 2003, thanks to the application of new technologies, with a computerized scan of the marble of Rome it was possible to reconstruct the missing parts, then proceeding to their reintegration.
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Details

Title: Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as the winning Venus

Author: Antonio Canova

Date:

Technique: Gesso

Displayed in: Canova Museum

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