by Susan Jaques
Before leaving Paris in late November 1802, Canova made preliminary sketches for the statue and modeled a larger-than-life-size clay bust of Napoleon that he used to create the plaster cast for the finished marble. To “improve” the bust of Napoleon, writes David O’Brien, Canova straightened the nose, heightened the cheekbones, and strengthened the brow and chin. He also slightly rearranged the sitter’s signature hairstyle to evoke the Roman emperor Augustus.13 For the body, Canova combined elements of two famous classical masterpieces—the muscular Farnese Hercules and the Vatican’s elegant Apollo Belvedere, which had been taken to Paris.14 Toward the end of 1803, Canova took delivery of a large block of Carrara marble.
From early on, buzz surrounded the commission. A year into the project, François Cacault, France’s ambassador in Rome, declared: “The statue must become the most perfect work of this century. It is not a figure to be placed on a public square; it must be placed in the museum in the midst of the ancient masterpieces we owe to the first consul.”15
Denon agreed. In a letter to Napoleon in December 1806 he wrote: “The whiteness and the purity of the material do not permit that this statue be exposed to the inclemencies of our climate; its nudity has made me think of placing it in the museum among the emperors and in the niche where the Laocoön is, in such a manner that it would be the first object that one sees on entering.”16
By late 1806, the finished marble was inspiring superlatives from visitors to Canova’s studio. Tuscan painter Pietro Benvenuti reported that Canova had surpassed himself, producing “a truly sublime and noble figure.”17 The Mercure de France announced that Canova had created a “masterpiece of modern sculpture.”
In 1807, Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy, commissioned a bronze replica of Canova’s marble for the Napoleon Forum in Milan. With this outdoor version, writes Valérie Huet, Napoleon’s stepson was following the tradition of Roman senators who commissioned and displayed statues of their emperors throughout the Empire.18 After being cast by founders Francesco and Luigi Righetti, the statue was installed in 1812 on a plinth in the court of the Milan Senate (today the statue is housed at the Brera Art Gallery).
In Rome, Napoleon’s estranged brother Lucien Bonaparte expressed his surprise that Canova had agreed to immortalize someone who had destroyed his homeland. Canova replied that he had portrayed Napoleon as a bringer of peace, adding that “Everything is in my signature Canova da Venezia.”19 Despite the accolades for Napoleon as Mars the peacemaker, Canova feared the worst. In November 1806, he wrote Quatremère de Quincy: “The statue of the Emperor will one day come to Paris; it will be criticized without pity, and I know it will certainly have its defects, above all the others it will have the disgrace of being modern and by an Italian.”20
After years of delays, Napoleon now stood in his museum’s Salles des Hommes Illustres, dwarfed by the eleven-foot marble. Though the head was recognizable, the physique was completely unbelievable. Napoleon’s short, portly body bore no resemblance to the buff, six-packed nude figure of Mars.
Canova sculpted him striding forward, looking at a small cast copper Victory on an orb in his right hand, holding a long scepter topped by an eagle in his left. Behind his right leg, an abandoned sword and belt rested against a tree trunk. With the exception of a chlamys flung over the left shoulder and a vine-leaf covering the genitals, the figure was stark naked.
Napoleon rejected the work on the spot and ordered the statue removed to a niche in the museum. It was hidden from view by a screen of planks and a curtain with access restricted to a handful of artists.21
Nudity wasn’t the statue’s only problem. Canova applied his signature surface polish to the muscle-bound figure, giving Napoleon’s imperial state portrait a sensual appearance.22 In addition, the public mood in France had shifted. When Napoleon ordered the statue in 1802, he seemed invincible. He had made peace with Britain and the Church and had just issued a sweeping new legal code. By 1811, the French army was embroiled in a grueling guerrilla war in Spain and Napoleon was considering an invasion of Russia.23 In this far less optimistic environment, Napoleon needed to change his image to that of a statesman.24
Canova’s loyalty to the abducted pope and his Italian patriotism have led some historians to conclude that he purposely chose the guise of a nude Roman god for Napoleon to undermine the statue’s propaganda potential.25 “Surely such a monument,” writes Christopher Johns, “with its pretensions to deified status and its connections to august artistic lineage, must have been recognized as a rejection, in cultural terms, of the achievements of the Revolution.”26
Denon delivered the bad news to Canova. On April 15, the museum director wrote: “I have the honor of informing you, Sir and Dear Colleague, that the emperor has come to see your statue. His Majesty has seen with interest the beautiful execution of this work and its imposing aspect, but he thinks that the forms of it are too athletic and that you may be a bit mistaken about the character that eminently distinguishes him, that is to say the calmness of his movements . . .” Denon tried to cushion the blow by adding: “His Majesty, my dear colleague, has not yet decided on its destination.”27
Denon indicated that he thought the work would go to the Senate and he would have it installed as soon as Napoleon informed him of his orders.28 Ironically, notes David O’Brien, calmness of movement was not at all how observers saw Napoleon. “With his impetuous nature,” wrote François-René de Chateaubriand, “instead of having a straightforward and continuous way of walking, he advanced by jumps, and he threw himself on the universe and jerked it along.”29
In early May, Quatremère de Quincy wrote a reassuring letter to Canova, expressing that Napoleon’s negative reaction was based on politics, not artistry. A month later, Jacques-Louis David also penned a supportive note. “You have made a beautiful figure representing the Emperor Napoleon,” David wrote. “You have made for posterity all that a mortal can make; the calumny that clings to it disregard, allow to mediocrity its little habitual consolation. The work is there, it represents the Emperor Napoleon, and it is Canova who has made it. That is all there is to be said.” Canova responded to David’s support with a letter of thanks.30
In addition to Napoleon’s rejection, 1811 was a difficult year for Canova personally. In January, the sculptor’s beloved housekeeper Luigia Giuli died. For twenty-seven years, his “madre morale” had cared for him and looked after his homes in Rome and Possagno. Later that year, Canova also lost his mother, Angela Zardo. After his father died, she had remarried, leaving him at age three in the care of his grandfather. Despite this abandonment, he had reconciled with his mother. He dedicated a funerary stele to both women.
Napoleon as Mars the peacemaker joined another banished portrait. After a brief meeting with the emperor, twenty-six-year-old Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painted Napoleon on His Imperial Throne in 1806. The hieratic frontal pose was inspired by the central image of God in Van Eyck’s famous Ghent Altarpiece, stolen for the Louvre. Dressed in his coronation garb, Napoleon sits on a throne atop a carpet with the imperial eagle, holding the scepter of Charlemagne and the hand of justice. His head is crowned with laurel wreaths, beside him is the sword of Charlemagne.
As Andrew Graham-Dixon posits, with its over-the-top references to Roman emperors, Holy Roman emperors, and the Christian God, the disturbing portrait may have been too close to the truth, revealing Napoleon’s monstrous ego.31 Napoleon had the portrait hidden away in the Musée de l’Armée, where it hangs today.
Canova’s heroic nude was a sculptural genre with ancient roots, going back to at least the sixth century B.C.E. The Greeks depicted athletes, gods, and heroes in the nude. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder explains that “heroic nudity” was a Greek element incorporated into Roman art. “In old days the statues dedicated were simply clad in the toga,” writes Pliny. “Also, naked figures holding spears, made from models of Greek young men from gymnasiums . . . became popular. The Greek practice is to leave
the figure entirely nude, whereas Roman and military statuary adds a breastplate.”32
Nudity had different meanings for the ancient Greeks and Romans. According to Michael Squire, nudity was an essential part of honorific portraiture for the Greeks, while Romans seemed more worried about its political, social, and cultural ramifications.33 “In Greece the ancient pre-Homeric sense of male nudity was overturned,” writes Larissa Bonfante. “In Italy, Greek civilization brought with it its “modern” ways, without, however changing customs and attitude deeply rooted in the religion and traditions of the peoples living in Etruria and other regions of ancient Italy.”34
Napoleon’s shock at his nude statue by Canova was not unlike the response of Roman republicans eighteen centuries earlier.35 “. . . nudity itself was more of a cultural taboo in Rome than it had been in the Greek cultural world,” explains Squire. “The few times that we do hear of Roman generals stripping off their clothes, it is not to show off their bodies, but rather to parade their military scars—to display the corporeal disfigurements which embody military prowess.”36
Given the Roman aversion to public nudity, Octavian’s decision to be represented naked was a daring one, explains Christopher Hallett. To mark his victory over Sextus Pompey at Naulochos in 36 B.C.E., Octavian permitted his depiction in a colossal nude gilded bronze statue set on a column near the speaker’s platform (rostra) in the Roman Forum.37 In celebration of his naval victory at Actium, Octavian was portrayed in an agate intaglio, naked, and holding a trident in the guise of Neptune, riding in a chariot drawn by hippocamps. In another engraved gem, Octavian again appears nude, wearing the aegis of Jupiter over his shoulders.38
While nudity in art was acceptable, Octavian drew a line at public exposure. Suetonias reported the rare occasion when Octavian exposed his chest: “When the people did their best to force the dictatorship upon him, he knelt down, threw off his toga from his shoulders, and with bare breast begged them to desist.” When Octavian hosted Greek games (at Nicopolis) to mark the victory at Actium, women were not allowed, presumably because of the nudity of the athletes.39
After the Senate awarded Octavian the name Augustus, for august, the sacred one, he launched an image makeover. The fully nude portraits from his days as triumvir disappear, replaced by clothed images with a toga and veiled head. Augustus writes in his Res Gestae: “There stood in the city about eighty statues of myself, standing, on horseback, or in chariots, all of silver; these I arranged to have removed, and with the money so obtained, I dedicated golden offerings in the temple of Apollo, in my own name, and in the name of those who had honoured me these statues.”40
Augustus began his imperial career with an image of Alexander the Great on his seal. Images of Alexander also appear in his Forum. As Shelley Hales describes, the famous Prima Porta Augustus “flirts with Alexander’s look through a Roman filter. . . . Divine nudity is implied despite heavy cuirass on which Augustus literally bears the cosmos.”41
After Augustus, Roman emperors returned to nude depictions in the guise of powerful gods. “Statues of emperors show them as Mars and Jupiter, full-blooded Olympian males who know how to fight, rule, and love like men. This virility was often flaunted in the guise of divine nudity . . .” adds Hales.42 Roman emperors are depicted wearing Jupiter’s aegis like a chlamys or hip-mantle, holding the scepter and thunderbolt of Jupiter.43 After she is deified by Claudius, Livia appears as Venus alongside Augustus as Mars.
In attitude and attributes, writes Benjamin Hemmerle, Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker resembles a Roman copy of a Greek statue. The tree trunk suggests the ancient translation of a statue cast in bronze into a version carved in marble. Canova depicts Napoleon as a demi-god, surpassing comparison with the Roman emperors.44
In defense of Canova’s controversial statue, his biographer Melchior Missirini wrote: “Art chose the nude as its language. Moreover, the portraits and statues of living men were nudes, so that Pompey, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus, Tiberius, Germanicus, Claudius, Domiziano, Nerva, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Septimius Severus, and Macrinus are all represented in the nude. [. . . ] the nude is the poetry of art, it is eternal just as art is eternal [. . .] and invests physical man with this universal existence that brings renown to moral man.”45
During their breakfasts together, Canova tried to convince Napoleon to reconcile with Pius VII. When this failed badly, he switched strategies, flattering the emperor into becoming a patron of excavations and artists in Rome. In this effort, the sculptor was far more successful. In Canova’s diary, he notes that Napoleon told him of his desire to emulate the great Roman patrons who had preceded him. Canova came away with edicts that included support of the Accademia di San Luca, part of the Roman academy system.
Founded in the late sixteenth century under the directorship of Federico Zuccari, the Accademia di San Luca sought to elevate the work of painters, sculptors, and architects above that of craftsmen. Members considered drawing to be the unifying principle of painting, sculpture, and architecture. The association of artists took its name from Saint Luke the evangelist, patron saint of the painter’s guild. According to legend, Luke created a portrait of the Virgin Mary. Artists of all nationalities were welcome.
In contrast, France’s academies were created by the state to train artists who would work on government projects. The Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture was founded in 1648, and the Académie Royale d’Architecture in 1671. In addition to the Paris schools, in 1666 a Rome branch was also opened where pensioners would study masterworks of antiquity, the Renaissance, and the baroque.46
A decade later, thanks to an agreement by Pope Innocent XI and Louis XIV, an attempt was made to combine the Accademia di San Luca with the Académie de France. But the plan for one arts institution in Rome was never realized. Now Napoleon resurrected the idea, proposing to merge the storied institutions into one arts school in Rome. By a decree in November 1810 engineered by Canova, the new institution was to be located in the suppressed convent of the Aracoeli housed in the former medieval monastery and Church of Ara Coeli above the Capitol near the Villa Medici, home of the French Academy since 1804.
Napoleon’s plan was to install Canova as director of the new imperial academy, which would include departments of painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, mythology, anatomy, and geometry, along with schools for music and mosaics. A member of the Accademia di San Luca since 1800 and a staunch supporter, Canova had been involved in reorganizing its curriculum and classrooms in Via Vonella into several rooms next to the Church of Saints Luca and Martina. Now Canova was nominated “Direttore Perpetuo” of the schools dependent on the Accademia; other members elected him “Principe.”47 As Susan Nicassio puts it, Canova “returned to Rome virtual director of the arts.”48
In the November decree, Napoleon pledged two hundred thousand francs for excavations in Rome, along with one hundred thousand francs for the Accademia di San Luca, three quarters of which was for maintenance and repair of monuments.49 By July, the Accademia had begun repairs to the Colosseum and Pantheon and the reconstruction of the Temple of Vespasian. But as Ronald Ridley writes, requests for repairs to the vast Colosseum were constant and the Accademia became insolvent.50
Canova found himself at loggerheads over finances and red tape with Baron Martial Daru, Intendant of the Crown Assets. The younger brother of Pierre Daru, former intendant general of the imperial household, Martial Daru was posted to Rome in March to supervise excavations. Finally in frustration, Canova wrote to Napoleon later that year, begging him to honor his commitment, conveying how circumstances were “much more wretched than what I have already described to you.”51
By 1812, Napoleon’s political fortune and imperial treasury were seriously reduced, making support for Rome a low priority. The new arts academy under Canova was officially decreed in May 1812, but never realized. According to Philippe Durey, Napoleon’s rejection of Canova’s statue combined with Canova’s refusal of any official p
osition in Paris marked a turning point in the relationship of the two men.52
Napoleon’s Consulta, established in June 1809, was charged with modernizing Rome. From a police report the previous May, the emperor was aware that the Eternal City was deteriorating. “The population has already lost 30,000 inhabitants; if the emperor does not turn his eyes and hand to it, those who know the place well are certain that in less than ten years the city of the popes will be almost as ruined as that of the Caesars. . . . The gardens of the Quirinal are dry; the palace is nothing more than a deserted and crumbling monastery. The great families close their houses, either from distress or from greed; the streets are empty except for beggars . . .”53
By imperial decree in July 1811, Napoleon committed one million francs a year for sweeping renovations.54 The ambitious program featured creation of the Villa Napoleon—a large public complex with gardens between the Milvian Bridge and the city walls. Other projects included a pair of cemeteries outside the city, new markets, slaughterhouses and stockyards, piazzas around Trajan’s column, the Pantheon, and the Trevi Fountain, and a bigger square outside the Quirinal Palace. Two connecting boulevards were also proposed—one from St. Peter’s Basilica to the Castel Sant’Angelo and another from the Quirinal to the Coliseum.55
In late August 1811, Rome’s young new prefect Camille de Tournon enclosed an urban plan with his letter to Napoleon: “On arriving from France, your Majesty will enter through the Porta del Popolo and proceed along the fine street of the Corso, which will be extended to the Forum, passing under the arches of Septimus and Titus, enter the capital and the temple of Antoninus, and by this proceed to Your palace by a great street cut through one of the most densely populated quarters.”56