Featuring important, beautiful pieces of great scientific value, the exhibition “Canova-Thorvaldsen. La nascita della scultura moderna“ (“Canova-Thorvaldsen. The birth of modern sculpture”) is an extraordinary opportunity to discover sculpture between the 18th and 19th century.
A historical and artistic period where sculpture saw a crucial transformation at the hands of gifted Italian Antonio Canova (Possagno 1757 – Venice 1822) and Danish Bertel Thorvaldsen (Copenhagen 1770 – 1844), protagonists and rivals in a cosmopolitan Rome where they confronted the universal values of the classical age.
Considered and celebrated as the “modern classics”, they were able to transform the very idea and technique of sculpture and thus create eternal masterpieces that would become widely loved and popular all over the world.
The exhibition looks like a real marble Olympus, the emblem of a civilization that looked at the ancient while aspiring to the modern. Canova was a revolutionary artist, who succeeded in giving sculpture the primacy on other arts by measuring himself against the ancients and surpassing them.
Thorvaldsen studied the work and strategy of his rival, but drew inspiration from a more austere, nostalgic idea of the classical art, thus inaugurating a new era of the Nordic art dominated by the timeless charm of the Mediterranean world.
Galleria d’Italia, Piazza della Scala 6
From October 25, 2019 to March 15, 2020
