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Dimensions: measurements height 55 3/4 in. alternate measurements 141.5cm
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Literature: Canova, exh. cat., Correr Museum, Venice, 1992, no. 132, pp. 282-289C. Miner, 'Hearst's Canova' in Apollo, November 2008
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Notes: Antonio Canova's Venus Italica was created to replace the antique Medici Venus which had been forcibly taken from the Tribuna of the Uffizi by Napoleonic forces during their occupation of Italy. Canova took on the commission in 1803 and asked for a cast of the original which had been installed in the Louvre. Like Pygmalion, Canova breathed life into the static antique model reinventing it in a graceful contemporary idiom. Cicognara noted the naturalism of the Canova's Venus in a letter to the artist of 1812: 'on quitting the bath the limbs begin to shiver, the arms and hands are drawn to the breast and the thighs come together as the body seeks through the motion of the muscles and the skin the towel that will dry them.'
The Venus Italica was one of Canova's most popular models and the accomplished marble carvers of Italy made versions throughout the nineteenth century.
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