Workshop of Antonio d’Este (1754-1837)

E. Davies, E. Tarizzo and S. Grandesso, Canova and his Legacy, cat. Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, Leeds and London, 2017, pp. 10-15

Antonio Canova was the greatest artist of his epoch. His works exemplify Neoclassicism and are some of the defining monuments of that movement, from the Theseus and the Minotaur (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and Hercules and Lichas (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome) to the Three Graces (prime version Hermitage, St Petersburg) and Endymion (Chatsworth). Canova was a celebrity artist in the broadest sense, a sculptor, painter, diplomat, curator and advisor. He was personally acquainted with Napoleon, Wellington, the Prince Regent, Byron and Stendhal, and deserves to be regarded as one of the towering figures of his age.

This beautiful portrait bust is carved after a model conceived by Canova’s friend and fellow sculptor Antonio d’Este (1754-1837) whilst the two were working together in 1795. The original plaster is in the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, whilst the prime marble version was in Canova’s private collection and descended to his heirs. Antonio d’Este was regarded in his lifetime as a talented portraitist capable of ‘retaining the physiognomy and the beauty of his subjects, eliminating any unpleasantness and coarseness nature had left in them’ (Faustino Tadini, 1796). Canova himself commented that ‘Antonio d’Este’s portraiture honours his name.’ The present bust exhibits the sensitivity of carving described by Tadini and, in following Antonio d’Este’s model, can be confidently attributed to the sculptor’s workshop.

Antonio d’Este was born in 1754 on the island of Burano in the Venetian lagoon, and trained alongside Antonio Canova under Giuseppe Bernardi. This encounter was the starting point of a life-long friendship, as recounted by d’Este himself in his Memorie di Antonio Canova, published posthumously in 1864. D’Este worked with Canova through the 1790s, overseeing the installation of Canova’s Venus and Adonis in the residence of the Marchese Berio in Naples (today Musée des Beaux-Arts, Geneva) in 1795 and accepted the commission for the Hercules and Lichas from Prince Onorato Gaetani d’Aragona on Canova’s behalf. In that same year d’Este was commissioned to cast a medal to celebrate Canova’s Emo Monument (now in the Museo Storico Navale, Venice). The year 1795 was thus an important one in the relationship between the two men and it was also in 1795 that d’Este created the plaster model for the present bust.

In 1799 d’Este took the decision to close his own studio and dedicate himself fully to Canova, becoming the latter’s studio director and administrator. The importance of d’Este to Canova’s workshop practice is underscored by the fact that it was d’Este who selected the Carrara marble blocks for his master. When Canova was appointed Inspector General of Antiquities and the Fine Arts for the Papal States by the Pope in 1802, he selected d’Este to run the Museo Chiaramonti (the pontiff’s collection of ancient busts and statues). D’Este worked with Canova on the excavations of the Via Appia Antica in Rome, and steadily rose in prominence, gaining a number of prestigious honorary appointments. He eventually became Director of the Vatican Museums and became a central figure in the artistic and intellectual life of Rome. He died in 1837 and is buried in the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Rome.