That Is There, On The Terms Which Were Those No Less Of Her
Character Than Of Her Time, In The Lasting Enjoyment Of A Publicity
Which Her Husband Denied It In His Lifetime; But It Had No More To Say
Now Than It Had So Many, Many Years Ago.
As, a piece of personal history
it is amusing enough, and as a sermon in stone it preaches whatever
moral you choose to read into it.
But as the masterpiece of the
sculptor it testifies to an ideal of his art for which the world has
reason to be grateful. Criticism does not now put Canova on the height
where we once looked up to him; but criticism is a fickle thing,
especially in its final judgments; and one cannot remember the behavior
of the Virtues in some of the baroque churches without paying homage to
the portrait of a lady who, whatever she was, was not a Virtue, but who
yet helped the sculptor to realize in her statue a Venus of exceptional
propriety. Tame, yes, we may now safely declare Canova to have been, but
sane we must allow; and we must never forget that he has been the
inspiration in modern sculpture of the eternal Greek truth of repose
from which the art had so wildly wandered, He, more than any other,
stayed it in the mad career on which Michelangelo, however remotely, had
started it; and we owe it to him that the best marbles now no longer
strut or swagger or bully.
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