The Proprietors of the EUROPEAN Magazine have the pleasure to inform the Public that their improved Plate of "PSYCHE," drawn by Mr. Corbould from the Statue executed by R. Westmacott, Esq., R. A., for His Grace the Duke of Bedford, is now ready for delivery, at No. 13, Cornhill, and may be obtained through the medium of every respectable Bookseller in the United Kingdom. TO CORRESPONDENTS. The continuation of Pulpit Eloquence is unavoidably omitted this month-it shall appear in our next number. We hope our fair Correspondent," Thisbe," will forgive the mistake we made in her signature; and, if she will oblige us with some more of Irer poetical effusions, we promise to be sufficiently careful. We have returned to our Publisher various Communications directed to their respective Authors. London. Published for the Proprietors of the European Magazine.by Lupton Reife 13. Cornhill Dec 11822. Themen Sup EUROPEAN MAGAZINE, AND LONDON REVIEW. NOVEMBER 1822. MEMOIR OF ANTONIO CANOVA, WITH A PORTRAIT PAINTED FROM THE LIFE, BY JOHN JACKSON, ESQ. R. A. AND ENGRAVED BY J. THOMSON. FROM the great celebrity of Canóva, we had for some time been solicitous of giving to the public a history of his life, and a description of those beautiful works of art, the emanations of his genius, which have at once achieved immortality for the artist, and have revived, in Europe, a delight in sculpture as intense as that which is said to have been felt by the Ancients. We had just acquired authentic Memoirs of this great man, when we received the unexpected and lamentable account of his decease. Few things can better attest the pre-eminence of Canóva than the rapidity with which the intelligence of his death has been conveyed to every part of Europe, and the earnestness with which the most exalted by rank, and the most celebrated for genius, have regretted the catastrophe. Antonio Canóva was born in 1757, at Possagno, a small village about eight miles from Bassano, in the Marquisate of Trevisano, in the Venetian territory. His birth was humble, but at the age of twelve, he attracted the attention of the Lord of Possagno, it is said, by placing upon that nobleman's table a figure of a lion, ably modelled in butter. -At fourteen, he made his first coup d'essai in marble, and produced two baskets of fruit, which now ornament the staircase of the Palazzo Farsetti at Venice. He was now patronized by Falier, who sent him to Vienna, and placed him as a student under Foretti, and then with his nephew, and afterwards launched him into professional life upon his own account, in a small shop under the cloisters of St. Stephano, at Venice, from which he removed to the Traghelto di San Maurizio. At the age of seventeen, or, as some say, fifteen, he produced his first statue, a figure of Eurydice, of about half the size of life, and executed in a species of soft marble, called by the Italians Pietro Dolce. As we reserve our remarks upon his genius and productions to the latter end of this Memoir, we shall content ourselves, for the present, in observing, that his figure of Eurydice displayed no promise of superiority, and exhibited no germ of that character of Canova's genius, which so decidedly pervaded all the productions of his maturer life. His next effort was his Orpheus, and this, with his Eurydice, are now in a villa near Asolo, about fifteen miles from Treviso. He was now admitted into the Academy of the Fine Arts at Venice, and won many of the prizes; and when the Cavalier Girolamo Zulian, the Venetian Ambassador at Rome, invited him to that city, the Senate of Venice granted him a pension of 300 ducats, as a reward for a group which he had made from the subject of Daedalus and Icarus. It is said, that the notice, bestowed upon him by the Venetian Ambassador, was in consequence of an earlier appreciation of his merits by Sir Wm. Hamilton, who had also bestowed upon him pecuniary favours. It is not always possible to decide with certainty the contest, which men of rank frequently maintain, for the honour of having been the first to discover and reward the incipient genius of those who subsequently rise to eminence; but Canóva always acknowledged, with gratitude, that, at this period of his life, he had received many important favours from Sir William Hamilton, then our Ambassador at Naples. The Cavalier Zulian commissioned him to execute the group of Theseus and the Minotaur, and his success at Rome was decided, although it must be confessed that, for the first years of his residence in that capital, his principal employers were our own countrymen. He acquired the esteem of all persons for his modest, unassuming manners, and for his generosity to poorer students of the Arts, and to the widows and orphans of unfortunate artists. In 1784, he executed the Mausoleum of Pope Clement XIV., the celebrated Ganganelli, and which was engraved by Vitolli. At the bottom of this engraving, Canóva paid an extravagant compliment to the Cavalier Jerome Zulian, the Venetian Ambassador to the Porte, but which he subsequently thought proper to moderate. In this engraving he takes the title of the Sculptor of Possagno, and tells the Cavalier Julian, produced a statue of Psyche standing and holding a butterfly with one hand, the flight of which she restrains by gently compressing the wings with the other. The figure is of the natural size, and there is a fine engraving of it by Bertini, under which Canóva has placed the following philosophic lines from Dante : "Non vi accorgete voi che noi siamo vermi Nati a formar l'Angelica farfalla?” At the age of thirty-six he finished his Venus and Adonis. This group has been engraved by Bertini, and is now at Naples; but the whole of his works were executed in the following order : Mary Magdalen weeping-A statue of small size, and one of the best of Canóva's works. It is now in the gallery of M. Sommariva, at Paris. Cupid and Psyche standingThese two figures are of natural size, but there is a defect in the figure of Cupid, which is made more delicate and feminine than that of Psyche The group is now at Malmaison. Canova executed a copy for the Emperor of Russia. Perseus, with the head of Medusa just severed from the body. This statue was dedicated to Joseph Bosio, a painter of Milan who had purchased it, but it afterwards became the property of Pius VII., who placed it upon the pedestal of the Apollo, of which it resembled the contour and attitude, but the recollection of the Greek figure deteriorated from the merits of the Perseus. When the works of art were restored from the French by the Allies in 1815, the Apollo resumed its station. Ferdinand IV. of Naples, in roman costume, with the helmet on his head, and with a large mantle covering the left shoulder and arm. This colossal statue was modelled in 1797, but not begun in marble till 1803, and the work was again suspended during the occupation of Naples by the French. It was eventually finished by the special order of Murat, who with much magnanimity accompanied the order by the observation, that "it was a |