NAME	YEAR	PLACE	ITER
Erma di Passamonti – gesso	1780-1781	Tavolini	-
Monumento funerario di Clemente XIV –marmo	1783-1787	Basilica dei Santi Apostoli	-
Monumento funerario di Clemente XIII -marmo	1783-1792	Basilica San Pietro	9
Testa di Clemente XIII – gesso	1784-1786	Accademia di San Luca	-
La famiglia Vitali – olio	1790-1798	Museo di Roma	-
Perseo trionfante – marmo	1797-1801	Musei Vaticani	9
Creugante – marmo	1795-1801	Musei Vaticani	9
Damosseno – marmo	1795-1806	Musei Vaticani	9
Ercole e Lica	1795-1815	Galleria Nazionale d'Arte moderna	7
Autoritratto – olio	1798-1899	Museo di Roma	-
Teseo lotta con il Minotauro – terracotta	1800 circa	Tavolini	-
Venere vincitrice - Paolina Bonaparte - marmo	1801-1808	Galleria Borghese	7
Ritratto di Paolina Bonaparte – marmo	1809	Galleria Borghese	7
Ritratto in gesso di Napoleone	1802	Accademia di San Luca	-
Ritratto di Pio VIII – marmo	1806-1807	Protomoteca Capitolina	1
Stele funeraria di Giovanni Volpato - marmo	1804-1807	Basilica Santi Apostoli	-
Stele funeraria conte A.De Souza Holstein –marmo	1805-1808	Chiesa S.Antonio dei portoghesi	-
Monumento funerario di Vittorio Alfieri – gesso	1804-1805	Galleria Nazionale d'Arte moderna	7
Leopoldina Esterhàzy Liechtesterin –terracotta	1806-1807	Museo di Roma	-
Ritratto di Domenico Cimarosa – marmo	1808 circa	Protomoteca Capitolina	1
Danzatrice con dito al mento – marmo	1809-1814	Galleria Naz.d'arte antica	-
Autoritratto – gesso	1811-1812	Museo di Roma	-
La Religione Cattolica – gesso	1813-1814	Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore	-
La Religione Cattolica – gesso	1814-1815	Accademia di San Luca	-
Busto d'ignoto	> 1814	Tadolini	-
Cenotafio degli Stuart – marmo	1817-1819	Basilica di San Pietro	9
Gorge Washington – marmo	1817	Museo di Roma	-
Pio VI orante – marmo	1817-1822	Basilica di San Pietro	9
Pio VI orante – gesso	1817	Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore	-
Ritratto di Pio VII – marmo	1820-1822	Musei Vaticani (Chiaramonti)	9
Compianto di Cristo . gesso	1820 circa	Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore	-
Busto di Maria Vergine – marmo	1821	Marchese Patrizi	-
-	-	-	-
CONOVA'S SCHOOL	-	-	-
Erma di benedetto Marcello - marmo	1725-1825	Protomoteca Capitolina	1
Ritratto di Pio VI	-	Villa Braschi	Tivoli

From his grandfather, master builder and chiseller, he learned the first elements of the job, but his true teachers were G. Bernardi-Torretti and G. Ferrari in Venice, where he was able to study thanks to senator Falier's interest who had intuited his gifting. The works of the Venetian period ( Orfeo ed Euridice, 1773; Apollo ; clay portraits of doge Paolo Renier and of don Gian Matteo Amadei; Dedalo e Icaro ) still resent of the eighteenth century taste, but already in the last of these a certain realistic accent perceived in the anatomic exactitude of Dedalo 's figure serves to confer a greater plastic determination to the shapes and underlines the refined taste for the picturesque, almost Hellenic, of Icaro 's image. He travelled to Rome with architect G. A. Selva in 1779, he settled definitely in that city in 1781; and here he came in contact with the classical precepts upheld by Winckelmann and zealously observed by his admirers. It's therefore natural that ever since the first of his Roman works ( Teseo , 1781; monument to Clemente XIV in the church dei SS. Apostoli ) the first signs of the neoclassical ideals can be adverted, well visible, for instance, in the renunciation to the employment of polychrome marbles for the pope's tomb, that however is, in its composition schemes, mindful of Bernini's pompous tombs. This was the first of a numerous series of funeral monuments erected by Canova ; from the one to Clemente XIII (1791) in S. Pietro in Vaticano guarded by an emphatic religious statue that is yet psychologically very sharp in the representation of the praying pope, to the latter tombs of a Maria Cristina of Austria (1798-1804) in Vienna and of Vittorio Alfieri (1810) in Florence, both built according to the scheme of the pyramidal mausoleums, all the way down to the Stuart sepulchre (1819) in St. Peter in Rome flawless in the harmony of the lines and made unforgettable by the images of the two splendid Angels with overturned torches, of a tender yet carnal sweetness. But even more than in the sacred themes, too often interpreted more with formal programmatic rigorousness than with vigilant artist's emotion, Canova 's genius was expressed in the series of sculptures of mythological subject that he began composing starting from the last years of the eighteenth century: thus several groups are born, Amore e Psiche in the Louvre (1793), a clever interlacing of youthful shapes modelled with gorgeous refining, the very elegant Ebe in the two-fold version in Berlin and in Forlì (around 1800), so devoid of every erudition albeit in its conscious recalling of classical models; the monumental Ercole e Lica (1815) sampled on Hellenistic schemes and not exempt of skilfulness in the highly studied search for balance in the composition between both figures. In 1798 he had gone far from Rome to avoid that year's Revolution; he returned there in 1799, but shortly afterwards, by then having risen to Europe-wide fame, he started working for Napoleon, who called him to Paris in 1802 and in 1810. In these years, besides those quoted earlier, a number or works were performed: Paolina Borghese's portrait (1808, Rome, Galleria Borghese ), depicted in the resemblance of Venus Victor, Napoleon's bust (Possagno) and nude statue (1809; Milan, Brera), Maria Luisa's bust, the gorgeous Venere Italica in Galleria Pitti, the Perseo and the two Pugilatori of the Vatican Museums, etc. Napoleon's statue in Brera maybe one of the best-known among the innumerable hero-celebrating portraits performed by Canova in his fortunate career; if it leaves us cold by now on owing to its evident drawing from the tradition of Hellenistic portraits, the harmonious image of the Paolina and the Venere (Pitti) suggest a subtle admiration for the happy attainment of pure ideal of beauty that has found in the artist an immediate and sincere response. In 1815 Canova returned to Paris to claim the restitution of the art treasures taken by the French, from there he went to London where he had the opportunity to know Phidia's art admiring the Parthenon's friezes which Lord Elgin had transported from Athens to England in those very same years. So the last phase of Canova 's activity was initiated, to this belong the Tre Grazie in Leningrad, the monument to Pio VI in the Confessione Vaticana , the Endimione dormiente in Possagno, Pio VII 's bust , etc. Canova 's art has exercised an enormous influence on the early nineteenth century sculpture, and it is surely possible to discover in him the only true great sculptor of the European neo classicism; however the results achieved by him are not always constant: when he was finally able to free himself from the excessive rules to let out his inexhaustible creative richness, then Canova produced works rich of a trepid poetry that are to this day still alive owing to the gesture's composure, the harmonious elegance of the shapes and the modelling sensitivity. But when the neoclassical theories and the celebrative and official demands suffocated his more truthful evocative vein, Canova 's sculpture rightly appears as cold and academic. Perhaps this is why the critics' attention has been attracted to the numerous clay and terracotta models that are kept in Possagno's Gipsoteca; and, really, these are very fresh creations, free from every stylistic convention; however, it must not be forgotten that for the maestro those models were only summary starting-points destined to be afterwards realized in flourishing images of ideal and impassive beauty; to forcefully want to attribute a different value to these, does not seem appropriate nor legitimate. The rare paintings, among which the Autoritratto (Florence), add nothing to Canova 's art.