LONDON.- Tomasso Brothers Fine Art is opening a new London gallery space at Marquis House, 67 Jermyn Street, St. James’s with a very special exhibition timed for London Art Week 2017. Canova and His Legacy will focus on the Italian master Antonio Canova (1757-1822), arguably the greatest and most illustrious sculptor of his age, and synonymous to this day with the height of Neoclassicism. His works, celebrated for their timeless beauty and grace, have never ceased to inspire generations of artists and collectors alike, and are exhibited in pride of place in the most important museums across the world. 

Highlights include a magnificent and exquisite pair of plaster busts by Antonio Canova depicting Paris and Helen, cast at the artist’s atelier in 1812; the supremely graceful Baccante Cimbalista (1837) by Cincinnato Baruzzi (1796-1878), one of Canova’s leading pupils, and, by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), a charming portrayal of Cupid with his bow (Amorino), dating to 1826-28, and which has remained in the same Scottish family since its purchase from Thorvaldsen in 1828. 

“Tomasso Brothers is committed to being part of the rich and vibrant art scene in the heart of this historic area of central London. The opening of our new space on Jermyn Street, timed for London Art Week 2017, is an exciting development,” says gallery Director, Dino Tomasso, who has recently been appointed to the Board of London Art Week. 

“We chose Canova as a central subject for this exhibition,” adds Raffaello Tomasso, Director, “because, like Michelangelo and Bernini, Canova was a revolutionary force in the field of sculpture. His impact on the Italian School and beyond cannot be overstated. Throughout the Neoclassical period his workshop represented the focal point of sculptural studies in Europe and for generations of marble carvers to come. His legacy reached as far away as Denmark and Scotland, Germany and Spain.” 

Dino and Raffaello Tomasso are recognised internationally for specializing in important European sculpture from the early Renaissance to the Neoclassical periods, and have had a presence in St. James’s since 2013, in addition to their principal gallery at Bardon Hall, Leeds.

Antonio Canova (1757-1822), Cast by Vincenzo Malpieri, Paris and Helen, 1812. Plaster. Paris: 72 x 30 x 26 cm. Helen: 67,5 x 33 x 29 cm. Signed: ‘ANT • CANOVA • F • A • 1812’ (Paris). © Tomasso Brothers Fine Art

Provenance: Possibly Francesco Barisan, Castelfranco Veneto, Italy, purchased from Canova in 1814
Private collection, Veneto, Italy

Cav. Cincinnato Baruzzi (1796 – 1878), Baccante Cimbalista, Accademia di Brera, Milan, 1837. White marble, 148 cm (58 1 ⁄ 4 in.) high. © Tomasso Brothers Fine Art

Provenance: Commissioned by Countess Antonietta Fagnani Arese, Milan, 1837 From whom acquired by Count Leonino Secco Suardo, Bergamo And by descent to Countess Camilla Maffei Marazzi, Bergamo Private collection, Lucca, Italy

Literature: G. Mazzini, Cincinnato Baruzzi: la vita, i tempi, le opere, Imola, 1949, pl. X A. Mampieri, Cincinnato Baruzzi, Bologna, 2014, pp. 185-89

Note: In 1837 Baruzzi presented the Bacchante playing the Cymbals at the Accademia di Brera's annual exhibition in Milan. The work, executed for the Milanese noblewoman Antonietta Fagnani Arese, was displayed together with two other female sculptures: Salmacis and The Temptation of Eve. Baruzzi had submitted designs for the former to the Pontificia Accademia in Bologna already in 1822 and subsequently carved it in marble for Count Ambrogio Uboldo (now untraced), whilst the latter had been commissioned by Count Gian Giacomo Bolognini Attendolo (Milan, Galleria d'Arte Moderna). Having initially trained with the sculptor Giacomo de Maria in Bologna, Baruzzi moved to Rome in 1817, where he entered the studio of Antonio Canova. In 1819 he received a grant to remain in the Eternal City from the Bolognese Accademia Clementina and, upon the master's death, he was named director of the workshop by the latter's step-brother and heir Giambattista Sartori Canova. In this capacity, Baruzzi finished the works Canova had left unfinished and carved in marble a number of the latter's models. Therefore, beside sculptures of his own invenzione, such as Psyche contemplating a butterfly (versions in Palazzo Milzetti, Faenza and Peterhof Castle) and Sleeping Venus (Peterhof Castle), Baruzzi completed Canovian masterpieces including the Hector and Ajax in the Treves collection or the Buckingham Palace Dirce, and executed in marble the Pietà for the church of San Salvatore in Terracina. In 1831, Baruzzi was called back to Bologna to take up his old teacher's position at the Accademia Clementina. During this period, the artist focused on participating in the annual exhibitions at the Accademia di Brera in Milan in order to promote his reputation, especially in relation to his graceful representations of female figures. Lombard patrons were indeed to play a key role in his career, as he received commissions from distinguished individuals such as the above-mentioned Uboldo and Attendolo Bolognini, or the Marquises Antonio Busca Serbelloni, Giorgio Raimondi and Filippo Ala Ponzone. Baruzzi's success is also illustrated by the fame of the above-mentioned works. The Eva was replicated for the house of Savoy, for Count Paolo Tosio – who already possessed a version of the artist's Silvia (Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia) – and for the banker Enrico Mylius (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan). The Salmacis had encountered particular favour with foreign patrons while Baruzzi was in Rome, as indicated by the versions acquired by Lord Kinnaird, Lord Cavendish and the Austrian Count Heberstein. Similarly, the Bacchante playing the Cymbals had been wonderfully received at the Brera, where it captured the attention of Count Leonino Secco Suardo, who immediately asked Antonietta Fagnani Arese to acquire the piece. The Countess accepted, commissioning from Baruzzi a second version of it, which, however, she never received. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that in 1851 Baruzzi decided to take to the London Great Exhibition versions of the Bacchante, the Eva and the Psyche. In her monograph on the artist, Antonella Mampieri published a fascinating contemporary photograph of the Bacchante on display at the Crystal Palace, yet it is not known whether the sculpture was sold on that occasion (see Cincinnato Baruzzi (1796-1878), Bologna, 2014, p. 42). Two years later at the Paris Salon, the same work, or an autograph version of it, was acquired by Elisabetta Trellony di Beauregard (present whereabouts unknown). In the meantime, the first version had been inherited by Countess Camilla Maffeis Marazzi, in whose collection in Bergamo it is documented by the biographer Giuseppe Mazzini in 1949 (see Cincinnato Baruzzi, la vita, i tempi e le opere, Imola, 1949, pl. X). The display of Baruzzi's three statues at Brera was widely covered by the press at the time. The Biblioteca Italiana art critic praised Baruzzi as “an artist educated by an excellent school and able to carve marble in an exquisite way” and described the Bacchante as “a youth of beautiful proportions, of Greek and gentle forms, in revealing clothes folded in exquisite manner, with a wreath around her head gently tilted on one side that adds beauty to the figure and reflects very well the artist's talent and scope for this work. This youth smiling graciously plays the cymbal; and whilst with her right thigh she rests on a Bacchic altar, with the tip of her left foot she lightly touches the ground, as if she was about to resume dancing” (Biblioteca Italiana, 1837, p. 435). As Marini observed, thanks to the Brera group exhibited in 1837 Baruzzi “was defined by Temistocle Solera as the Simonides and the Anacreon of sculpture, so full of grace and subtlety were his works”. Carlo Tenca, the most distinguished critic of the period, called him “The sculptor of grace” (see Scritti d'Arte, 1838-1859, A. Cottignoli ed., 1998, p. 5), after having seen the Bacchante and her companions in 1837. Baruzzi was therefore capable of interpreting the fame of classical subjects in sculpture, even in the romantic era, specialising in this particular field, dear to Canova, of whom he proposed himself as the heir. The Bacchante was an all'antica composition, in which the artist displayed his recherché virtuosity in the execution of the headdress, in the naturalism of the nude, in the accurateness of the details on the base such as the cista mystica and the musical instruments, which all derived from [Canova's] Graces. Indeed, a critic writing in Glysson in 1837 defined the Bacchante “a Grace resting from the dance, wishing to return to it” (Glysson, n'appuyons pas. Giornale di Scienze, Lettere, Arti, no. 75, 1837, p. 290). Above all, the Bacchante was inspired by Canova's series of Dancers, of which it constitutes a kind of variation, represented between stillness and suspended movement, and which it explicitly recalls in the motif of music and rhythm. The work was thus described in a note accompanying it to Paris: “A Cymbal Player, or Bacchante, who plays for the dance of her companions” (Lino Sighinolfi, ‘La Vita e le Opere di Cincinnato Baruzzi', in Uno Scultore Neoclassico a Bologna fra Restaurazione e Risorgimento. Il Fondo Cincinnato Baruzzi nella Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio, C. Maldini ed., Bologna, 2007, p. 337). The figure, sitting on the leopard skin that is an attribute of Bacchus, in her joyful pleasantness, in her quality of fantastical flight into a mythical golden age, evokes those Arcadian atmosphere then popular in the work of Thorvaldsen, in the all'antica Young Shepherd (Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen) or in the Anacreontic reliefs, which were at the heart of the adoption of romanticism by the Roman neo-classical school. In the words of the Glysson critic, this “graceful sculpture” embodied “the last encounter between the classical and the romantic”.