Orpheus

myminifactory

Antonio Canova was born in Possagno in 1757 at the foot of the Treviso Prealps to a family skilled in stonecutting. His grandfather provided his technical training, as did workshops run by skilled late Baroque sculptors between Asolo and Venice. He quickly joined influential circles in Venice where he began developing his classicist direction and landed his first commissions. This sculpture, one of two depicting the mythological tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, was created between 1775-76 for Senator Giovanni Falier's villa gate pillars in Asolo by an eighteen-year-old Canova who had not yet fully broken free from Eighteenth-century painting influences. Those influences disappeared with his sensational masterpiece 'Daedalus and Icarus' (1777-79), which enabled him to finish his training in Rome. There, he solidified his reputation as the most advanced sculptor by creating the funerary monuments for Popes Clement XIV in the Basilica dei SS. Apostoli between 1783-87 and for Pope Clement XIII, also known as Carlo Rezzonico, at St Peter's between 1783-92.