Vintage Two Graces Crowning Venus Alabaster White Marble Sculpture Statue 14"

Description

Vintage heavy alabaster / white marble neoclassical sculpture showing two Graces dancing and crowning the goddess Venus with flowers. This sculpture replicates the central group from “Venus and the Graces Dancing in the Presence of Mars” by Antonio Canova. The great neo-classical sculptor originally produced this composition in tempera on paper and in sculptural relief, long before the idea for his famous sculpture of The Three Graces was presented to him by the Empress Josephine in 1812. Canova conceived the image between 1794 and 1799 and it is not known whether the painting or the relief was the primary version. Both are in the collections at Possagno and depict the same composition, showing the three daughters of Zeus and Euryonome: Euphrosyne, Aglaia and Thalia, dancing with Venus before Mars. Aglaia plays music on her lyre, to which all four women dance on points. Her two sisters delicately balance a crown of flowers above Venus’s head. Whilst Mars is entranced a mischievous putto steals away his sword. As Hugh Honour notes, the adornment of Venus was described in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and in Ovid’s Fasti, but no ancient image of the subject is known. Without antique prototype, Canova here draws upon on his own imaginative vision and his love of the theatre. The composition was designed for his own interest and only a few plaster casts of the relief were produced for particular friends and patrons.

Condition

Good Overall - piece missing from edge of base; light staining

Dimensions

9.5” x 3.5” x 14.25” (Width x Depth x Height)