Bust of Paris

CC0 Public Domain Designation

1809

Antonio Canova (Italian, 1757–1822)

The enormously popular Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova frequently made replicas or variants of his major works to satisfy the demand for his art. While executing a commission from Empress Josephine of France for a full-length statue of Paris (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), Canova carved this bust for his friend Antoine Quatremère de Quincy, a French Neoclassical theorist and critic who greatly inﬂuenced the sculptor’s artistic ideals. It depicts the moment in Greek mythology when the shepherd Paris, called upon by Zeus to judge who was the most beautiful among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, turns to gaze at the three goddesses. Canova exploited the subject to create an ideal head, balancing the geometry of pure forms with the sensuousness of Paris’s expression. Upon receipt of the gift, Quatremère stated: “There is in [the bust] a mixture of the heroic and the voluptuous, the noble and the amorous. I do not believe that in any other work you have ever combined such life, softness, and chaste purity.” Documents indicate that Canova made four full-length marble statues and at least seven busts of Paris, a clear indication of the sculpture’s popularity.

Status: On View, Gallery 223
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Antonio Canova
Title: Bust of Paris
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1809
Medium: Marble
Inscriptions: Inscribed: Ant(o)nio Quatremere/Amico Optimo/Antonius Canova/Dono Dedit/F. Romae/An. MDCCCIX
Dimensions: 69.9 × 30.8 × 28 cm (27 1/2 × 12 1/8 × 11 in.); With socle: 134.7 × 58.5 cm (53 × 23 in.)
Credit Line: Harold Stuart Endowment; purchased with funds provided by Mrs. Harold T. Martin
Reference Number: 1984.530
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/102591/manifest.json

J. S. Memes, Memoirs of Antonio Canova, with a Critical Analysis of his Works, and an Historical Overview of Modern Sculpture (Edinburgh, 1825), pp. 508, 576.
Antoine Quatremère de Quincy, Canova et ses ouvrages ou mémoires historiques sur la vie et les traveaux de ce célèbre artiste (Paris, 1834), p. 175, no. 1.
“Succession de Mme. C.,” Gazette de l’hôtel Drouot 17, 347–48 (December 10–11, 1908).
René Schneider, Quatremère de Quincy et son intervention dans les arts: 1788-1830 (Paris, 1910), p. 381.
Elena Bassi, La Gipsoteca di Possagno: Sculture E Dipinti di Antonio Canova (Venice, 1957), pp. 180–81.
Gérard Hubert, La Sculpture dan l’Italie Napoléonienne (Paris, 1964), pp. 135-36 n. 6, fig. 43.
Mario Praz, L’Opera completa del Canova (Milan, 1976), p. 118, nos. 207, 208.
Ian Wardropper and Thomas Rowlands, “Antonio Canova and Quatremère de Quincy: The Gift of Friendship,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 15, 1 (1989), pp. 38–46.
Venice, Correr Museum, Canova (1992), p. 320, no.144 (ill.).
Hugh Honour, Edizione nazionale delle opere di Antonio Canova 1 (Rome, 1994), pp. 405, 414.
Ian Wardropper, “Collecting European Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago,” Apollo 154, 475 (September 2001), pp. 9–10, no. 13.
Bassano del Grappa, Museo Civico, Canova (2003), pp. 398-99, fig. IV24.
C. D. Dickerson III and Emerson Bowyer, Canova: Sketching in Clay, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: National Gallery, 2023), 46 (detail ill.), 47, pl. 34, 268.

Art Institute of Chicago, Canova and France, Jan. 15–Feb. 20, 1985 [no cat].
Washington, DC, Canova: Sketching in Clay, June 11–Oct. 9, 2023, pl. 34; Art Institue of Chicago, Nov. 19, 2023-Mar. 18, 2024 [Chicago only].

Antoine Chrysosome Quatremère de Quincy (died 1849), Paris, by 1810 [gift from the artist, according to Quatremère de Quincy, 1834]; sold, his estate sale, 14 rue de Condé, Paris, April 22, 1850, lot 2. Sold, Hôtel des Ventes Mobiliéres, Paris, March 15, 1851, lot 48. Madame Chesnet, before 1908; sold, her estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, December 7–8, 1908, lot 82, to M. (Emilio?) Mihura for 800 francs [see Gazette de l’Hôtel Drouot, December 10–11, 1908]. Pradere family, Buenos Aires, before 1955 [according to letter from Francisco Murature to Hugh Honour, February 10, 1983, in curatorial file]. Casa Pardo, Buenos Aires, by late 1950s [according to source cited above]; sold to Francisco Murature, Buenos Aires, by late 1950s [according to source cited above]. Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, New York, by early 1980s; sold to the Art Institute, 1984.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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