AND ANOTHER THING
You can hold a candle to bimbos immortalised in marble
PAUL JOHNSON
Despite the philistine sneers of some of our less educated leader writers, Mr Stephen Dorrell, the new Heritage Secre- tary, is right to make a fuss about Canova's `Three Graces', and John Paul Getty II should be given a bar to his KBE for allow- ing us to keep it.
It is the masterwork of a superb sculptor, for Canova (1757-1822) deserves to rank with Praxiteles, Donatello, Michelangelo, Bemini and Rodin among the greatest practitioners of this difficult craft. Malcolm Baker of the Victoria & Albert has at last pointed out, in a letter to the Guardian on Monday, that our 'Three Graces' is not a mere copy of the one in St Petersburg but, rather, another version and a much better one, of finer marble and with a more metic- ulous finish. Canova did the one now in Russia first, and learned from it, as he learned from all his experiences, and the intertwining of the ladies — all fantastically difficult to sculpt in marble — is done with far more confidence and aplomb in the Woburn example.
Canova has been underrated in Britain for the last 150 years. Bonaparte made no such mistake: he rated him as Europe's greatest sculptor on a par with his favourite painters, David and Ingres. Wellington and Castlereagh were equally enthusiastic, and it was because they listened to his tearful pleas that Canova, as papal commissioner, succeeded in 1815 in getting the French authorities to disgorge the antique and Renaissance masterpieces Bonaparte had looted from the Vatican, plus many other Italian art treasures which were now put back in their rightful homes.
With the possible exception of the great anonymous artists of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, no sculptor has ever possessed such technical skill as Canova in working with difficult material. He acquired it from infancy as the brilliant offspring of a family of stonemasons at Possogno in the Dolomitic foothills of the Alps. What is more surprising is his daring and originali- ty. In the years 1783-87 he ended baroque sculpture almost at a stroke, replacing it with neo-classicism, by producing his stu- pendous tomb of Pope Clement XIV in Rome. Tombs of the exalted were big news in those days. He followed this up by pro- ducing another epoch-making tomb in the Augustinekirche, Vienna, which houses the Habsburg dead. This was to honour Maria Christina, daughter of the great Maria- Theresa and sister of the executed Marie- Antoinette. Canova was a devout Catholic and a conservative, never happier than when employed by popes and legitimate sovereigns, but he was also an artistic inno- vator of unsurpassed courage, and perhaps this is why he appealed so strongly to the family which was trying to overthrow the established order of Europe.
At all events, Bonaparte's pretty younger sister, Pauline, adored him as she believed he had a unique gift for making perishable female flesh immortal. She was narcissistic, obsessed with the beauty of her body, espe- cially her small and delicate feet. She mar- ried as her second husband Camillo Borgh- ese, head of one of Rome's oldest families, and even when she was far from young the Roman nobility and famous visitors, espe- cially Englishmen, were invited to the Palazzo Borghese to see `la toilette des pieds'. She issued printed cards.
Many years after, Augustus Hare pub- lished a description of these occasions which he had from Lady Ruthven, who had attended one. The guests found Pauline with her little, exquisitely white tootsies dis- played on a velvet cushion. At her com- mand, her maids entered, touched the feet with sponges and dusted them with powder. The women guests were just as fascinated as the men, though less proprietorial. The Duke of Hamilton, a regular worshipper at the shrine, would take up one foot and tuck it into his waistcoat 'like a little bird' (a feat, if I may put it that way, quite difficult to accomplish, unless the Duke had a spe- cial waistcoat).
Once Canova was under her spell, Pauline determined to get him to immor- talise her whole body. Like her elder sister Caroline, she was proud of her long, ele- gant back. Caroline had used her favourite artist, Ingres, to make it famous all over Europe, once in 'La Grande Odalisque' actually inserting three vertebrae too many `I'm sure I recognise that heavy breathing.' to heighten the sensation. Not to be out- done, in 1808 Pauline ordered Canova to sculpt her naked, as Venus Victoria, the archetypal sex-goddess. The pious sculptor at first refused. Then he compromised by offering to present her as Diana, more or less naked but associated with chastity. Pauline insisted on Venus, and Canova, used to dealing with absolute sovereigns, obediently complied. He did cover up her private parts, but the splendid back is dis- played to the cleft of her buttocks, and there can be no question that the statue is erotic. He placed her on a mattress sculpt- ed of marble, like her body, but he used as a plinth a real bed of painted wood, to heighten the realism.
Canova carved his portrait-statues not just to be seen from afar but closely inspected from a distance of inches, and the plinth-bed has a mechanism which allows the entire work to be turned around for minute scrutiny. During Pauline's life- time, it was the custom, after dinner, to take friends of the family and honoured guests to look at the statue by candlelight — this was how Canova wanted all his works to be seen — and the treat had an additional thrill when the princess was in charge of the party and drew attention to her finer points. The then pope was partic- ularly down on sex and actually banned trousers in the papal states as being too tight-fitting, but he could do nothing about Pauline's self-presentations, which contin- ued under his nose until her death in 1825.
Canova's eroticism, then, is to be enjoyed, not just admired, with the help of darkness, candles, shadows and chiaroscuro, and I hope this is borne in mind when our 'Three Graces' find a per- manent setting. Then the multitude will rediscover him again. It is true that, like most sculptors, he made egregious errors. Asked to sculpt Washington for the state house in Raleigh, North Carolina, he depicted the President delivering his final address to Congress with bare knees and wearing a Roman toga. This, I think, was destroyed in a fire but you can still see, in Naples, Canova's odd presentation of the ferocious Bourbon, King Ferdinand I, as a transvestite, dolled up like Minerva and on a colossal scale.
However, there is nothing incongruous about the 'Three Graces'. It is a joyful hymn in marble to the delights of the female body and we are very lucky to have it.
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