On 5 May , the second exhibition appointment of 2022 of the Canovian Anniversaries will open at the Antonio Canova Gypsotheca Museum in Possagno (TV), an initiative that celebrates the 200th anniversary of the death of the genius of Neoclassicism. The exhibition “ Canova and pain. The Mellerio stele. The renewal of the sepulchral representation ", conceived by Vittorio Sgarbi and curated by Francesco Leone and Stefano Grandesso, with the artistic direction of Contemplazioni, finds its apex in the recomposition, for the first time since their dismemberment, of the two Mellerio monuments, commissioned by Count Giacomo Mellerio in memory of his uncle Giovanni Battista and his wife Elisabetta Castelbarco, after visiting Canova's Roman studio.

The count was struck by a funeral monument on which the artist was working and commissioned him the two funerary steles, which Canova attended from June 1812 to 1814 , which arrived in Gerno, at Villa «Gernetto» Mellerio in August 1814 to be placed in a specially built chapel. To the two works by Canova was added in 1825 the monument that Giacomo Mellerio commissioned from the sculptor Giuseppe De Fabris to commemorate his daughter Giovannina who died prematurely.

Between 1962, when they are still documented in situ, and 1975, the year in which the «Gernetto» was purchased by the Credito Italiano, the two steles were removed from their original location. In 1978, blocked by the Superintendency of Historical and Artistic Heritage of Palermo while they were about to be exported to Germany, the two works were acquired by the Sicilian Region. The reliefs of the monument by De Fabris, on the other hand, took other paths, today kept in two different private collections and exceptionally and for the first time reassembled on the occasion of this exhibition.

On display, in addition to this extraordinary recomposition, it will be possible to admire works from national and international public and private collections, divided into three sections: the first dedicated to the Mellerio stele and the De Fabris monument, the second to the renewal of the sepulchral representation operated by Canova and the latest that traces the tributes of many artists to Canova and his inventions. The director of the museum, Moira Mascotto “It is an exhibition of great historical, artistic and cultural value.