Canova, Antonio (1757-1822)
Dedalo e Icaro (Daedalus and Icarus)
1777–1779
Marble, 182 x 95 cm
Museo Correr, Venezia
This famous sculpture, his first large one in marble, is the masterpiece of Antonio Canova‘s Venetian youth. It was created for the procurator Pietro Vettor Pisani and intended for his Palazzo Pisani Moretta on the Grand Canal. In it the twenty-year-old Canova created, with extraordinary inventive genius, a suggestive contrast between the classical canon (Icarus) and a particular eighteenth-century Venetian pictorial naturalism, especially inspired by the ‘heads’ of Giambattista Piazzetta (Daedalus). The very clever composition mutually links the two figures around a central ‘void’, closed in a circle by the thread stretched between the wing and the hand of Daedalus. In an emotional, sentimental and dramatic communication, the father Daedalus, with a doubtful, tense face, is securing the wings, made of feathers held together with wax, to the arms of his young son Icarus, who follows him with calm trust, anticipating the joy of the flight that will make him escape from the labyrinth and the threats of the Minotaur. The treatment of the marble surface is pictorially vibrant, still far from the smooth purity then typical of the Canova style. Eloquent trademark of the sculptor, placed in ideal continuity with the craftsman Daedalus, are the mallet and chisel placed at the feet of the old architect. The sculpture, presented at the ‘Fiera della Sensa’ (Ascension) of 1777 with great popular success, earned the young Canova the 100 gold sequins with which to undertake the awaited journey to Rome and artistic consecration; in fact there the decisive direct impact with the Ancient and the support of various personalities determined the decisive classical turning point and the rapid rise to international fame. (Correr)