Dancer with Finger on Chin

In the second half of the 18th century the court at Naples published engravings of the ancient wall paintings dug out at Herculaneum, the Roman town buried by Vesuvius, and educated Europe came to know their small dancing figures floating on plain grounds. Canova, the gallery suggests, was taken with them. For years he drew and painted dancers before he tried them in marble, and in the end he carved three, one with her hands on her hips, one with cymbals, and this one, with a finger raised to her chin. The marble was ordered by Domenico Manzoni, a banker from Forlì, and finished in 1814. Less than 15 years later it was sold to Count Guryev, the Russian ambassador in Rome, who took it to Saint Petersburg. This full-size plaster is a cast of that statue, the dancer lifted onto the tips of her toes in the middle of a step.