Getty Museum

Portrait of Antonio Canova

Date

1787

Medium

Black chalk

Culture

German

Department

Drawings

Institution

Getty Museum

This intense portrait of the famed neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova (Italian, 1757-1822) was executed by the artist's friend and contemporary, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. The pair met in Rome shortly after their arrival in the city circa 1780. Canova's rather leonine features in this portrait, including his oversized, deep-set eyes and tense brow suggest the focus and resolve of this extraordinary sculptor. His facial features and balding head correspond closely to Canova's painted self-portrait in the Uffizi, dating from 1792. Tischbein is sometimes called "Goethe-Tischbein," due to his close relationship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that culminated in his most well-known painting of Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1787). Like Tischbein's painting of Goethe, the present portrait can probably be understood as a "friendship portrait," done by Tischbein as a symbol of kinship between the two artists.

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