Canova was born in 1757 in the village of Possagno near Treviso in the Veneto. After the death of his father, Canova trained under his grandfather Pasino Canova (1711-1794), a stonecutter and sculptor. The boy's precocious talent attracted the attention of Senator Giovanni Falier, who arranged in 1768 for him to enter the workshop of Giuseppe Bernardi. Falier also provided early commissions on antique mythological themes, including Eurydice (1773-1775) and Orpheus (1775-1776). In 1775 Canova opened his first studio in Venice. His sculpture Dedalus and Icarus (1777-1779) won him funds for a trip to Rome, where he would settle permanently in 1780.
The most celebrated sculptor and perhaps the most renowned artist of his time, Canova was hugely prolific and preternaturally proficient. He renounced marriage and family life, dedicating his entire energy to his work. Several hundred works of sculpture, often in repeated versions that allowed the artist to "improve" on his conceptions, came out of his studio, along with about one hundred paintings. His clay sketch models show astonishing spontaneity and animated abstraction. As was customary in his time, Canova employed assistants to rough-hew marble compositions from his plaster models, making use of pointing; he was a pioneer in the use of full-size rather than small-scale models, and exceptional for his insistence on personally carving the surfaces into their final character. Marbles from Canova's hand display dazzling technical virtuosity and tactile attractions. The consummate neo-classical artist, he answered his age's demand for an idealization evoking purified antique forms, but endowed these with delicate naturalistic textures that were both praised and blamed. His posthumous reputation suffered both from changing taste and from the numerous copies and emulations of his style by hands that could not approach the quality of his carving. His output included portrait busts that exalt and detach their subjects from the world of transient individuality, and fantasy heads that embody abstract ideals of beauty. John Keats (1795-1821) and Lord Byron (1788-1824) praised his work, which was sought by the powerful of every nationality and political persuasion. Generous in endowing charities for the arts, artists, and his native town, and heroic in his efforts to repatriate a plundered Italian artistic patrimony, Canova showed a farsighted concern for national artistic patrimonies and the preservation of works of art in situ.
