10 One interesting exception is Canova’s statue of Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix recent conservat (.)Ħ The Venus in Venus and Adonis, for instance, completed in 1795, was given a slightly yellow tint (Fig.8 For more on the different versions of Hebe, see Norman and Cook, “‘Just a Tiny Bit of Rouge upon th (.).7 Joseph Forsyth, Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters During an Excursion in Italy, in the Year (.).6 For more on Venus and Adonis, see the comments by Augustin Creuze de Lesser in note 54.5 And third, hyper-realism also suggested that the sculpture’s surface was exactly that-that is to say, only a surface, a shell that contained the messy reality of the body. Second, the “reality effect” created by color threatened sculpture’s status as high art. First, encaustic treatments mellowed the marble surface, giving modern works the appearance of antiquities. In this article, I will examine this discomfort with Canova’s “surface values.” 4 Viewers reacted negatively to these treatments because they found them to be deceptive. Some of Canova’s critics considered them unnecessary, or worse yet, fraudulent. Richard Howard (Berkele (.)Ĥ Canova and his admirers credited these treatments with giving his sculptures translucency and a “new softness”. 5 See Roland Barthes, “The Reality Effect,” in The Rustle of Language, trans.See Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (.) 3 After a visit to Canova’s studio in 1799, for instance, Général Baron Thiébault remarked, “Une chos (.).This effect was the result of the sculptor’s careful manipulation of the stone surface, his skill with the tools of his trade-dramatically visible, for instance, in the dimpled thigh of Gian-Lorenzo Bernini’s Proserpina (Fig. Sculpture’s illusionistic success, on the other hand-particularly sculpture of the early modern period-depends on the impression of malleability, of the transformation of marble into soft flesh. Painting’s strength rests on its ability to create a fictional three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional plane. Worse, his art was “not a science”, for “he simple measurements of members and the nature of movements and poses alone are enough for such an artist, and so, sculpture ends by demonstrating to the eye only what is what.” Painting, on the other hand, was an art of illusion, for “by the power of science, demonstrates the grandest countrysides with distant horizons on one flat surface.” 1 All this is to say, sculpture was criticized for appearing to be the thing itself and for being a medium that could be understood not just by sight, but by touch.Ģ What painting and sculpture do have in common, however, is that in the best of both their illusion lies on the surface. Sculpting was a form of labor that generated sweat and fatigue, and the sculptor was doomed to be forever dirty, covered in marble chips and dust. Painting was characterized as an intellectual craft, while sculpture was largely mechanical. The paragone, or competition between the two arts, was rooted in Leonardo da Vinci’s comments, which have become something of a truism now. Its very solidity distinguishes it from the art of painting and was one of the reasons painting was viewed as the superior medium by artists of the Renaissance.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Paragone: A Critical Interpretation with a New Edition of (.)ġ Sculpture-an art of mass, volume, weight, and density.

Piranesi programa