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Subversion through historical association: Canova's Madame Mère and the politics of Napoleonic portraiture

1997; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02666286.1997.10434266

1943-2178

Christopher M. S. Johns,

European Political History Analysis

Abstract The difficulties encountered by artists trained in the traditional academic and patronage systems of Ancien Régime Europe must have been considerable when they were compelled-to operate in the centralized world of the Napoleonic Empire. Younger artists, such as Jean-Antoine Gros and Andrea Appiani, readily adapted themselves to the agenda of Bonapartist glorification, but established and celebrated practitioners such as JacquesLouis David and Antonio Canova were in a much more ambiguous situation. David certainly admired Napoleon during the Consulate as the savior of the principles of the Revolution and the Republic, but his reaction to the Empire was, like that of so many others, highly ambivalent. The subversive aspects of David's anti-imperialism in such canonical images as Le Sacre and The Distribution of the Eagles have recently been underscored; the painter's leftist politics asserted themselves, if subtly and warily. Anti-Napoleonic sentiment on the part of the Venetian sculptor Canova, however, was engendered on the political right. Canova's politics were certainly of a milder kind than those of David, but they nonetheless indicate a fully developed political personality characterized by a deep conservatism, loyalty to the Papacy and to the Roman Catholic religion, a profound Venetian patriotism, and a nascent Italian cultural nationalism that would ultimately, and posthumously, make Canova a hero of the Risorgimento.