ITALIAN NEOCLASSICAL SCULPTOR, EARLY XIX CENTURY SLEEPING... Lot 235

ITALIAN NEOCLASSICAL SCULPTOR, EARLY XIX CENTURY SLEEPING ARIANNA White marble sculpture, 45 x 74 x 23 cm. Black veined marble base ORIGIN Roman family Created in 1808 by Antonio Canova, the work depicting Pauline Borghese in the guise of Venus Victrix caused a sensation in the European public because of her comely nudity. Here Canova had himself drawn inspiration from the well-known models of classical painting, revealing affinities in the poses of Correggio's and Titian's Danae and Giorgione's Sleeping Venus, poses and attitudes consonant with and required by Pauline herself, gloriously displaying herself and the prize she was awarded. The sculpture we present here was made by an artist imbued with neoclassical values and well embedded in the international Roman artistic milieu of the early 19th century. This sleeping maiden is very familiar with the pose of Canova's Pauline, and of this one she recounts very closely the refined execution and polish of the marble, but the choice is in the common model of the sleeping Ariadne of the classical age preserved in the Vatican Museums, purchased as Cleopatra in 1512 by Julius II for the Statue Courtyard of the Belvedere and identified as Ariadne by Ennio Quirino Visconti in the late eighteenth century. The 2nd-century BCE Hellenistic original handed down from the Roman copy depicts the sleeping Cretan princess, just abandoned by Theseus on the shores of the island of Naxos, moments before she is found by Dionysus who will take her as his bride. And this is the image chosen by Giorgio De Chirico as a constant presence in the center of his Italian Piazzas, the Ariadne who offered the thread to the hero to solve the questions hidden in the labyrinthine maze of metaphysics CONDITIONS Raised arm with pinky missing and restoration reassembled at poso. Breaks and restoration to rear foot BIBLIOGRAPHY Rome and the Ancient. Reality and Vision in the 1700s, edited by C. Brook and V. Curzi, Fondazione Roma Museo, Palazzo Sciarra, Rome November 30, 2010-March 6, 2011, Milan 2010, p. 101, fig. 2 We would like to thank Dr. Laura Moreschini for editing the file on the work.