Antonio Canova after his death

When Antonio Canova died in Venice on 13 October 1822, the whole of Europe felt it. He was reckoned the most celebrated sculptor of his age, and his cool, classical marble had set the taste in the city for a generation. 14 years later Placido Fabris painted this small picture of the sculptor in death, barely 44 by 53 centimetres, and signed it in the corner ‘of Alpago’, after the mountains near Belluno where he was born. It shows Canova as a still, quiet face in death, the kind of likeness kept for remembrance rather than for display. His body went home to his village of Possagno, yet his heart stayed in Venice. Taken during the autopsy and sealed in a porphyry urn cut with the words ‘the heart of the great Canova’, it was first kept here at the Academy, then carried across the city to the Frari church, where it rests today.