Laura
LAURA
after CANOVA
Italy 19th century
Height 21 ¼” ( 54cm )
Restoration to the tip of the nose and some wear marks in the marble.
The Laura was one of Antonio Canova’s Ideal Heads, carved between 1811 and 1820, that celebrated contemporary notions of beauty. While most of these works
are inspired by a classical aesthetic, such as Helen, Sappho and Calliope, those of Laura, Beatrice and Eleonora d’Este concentrated on what Count Leopoldo Cicognara, Canova’s biographer and friend, described as ‘an almost new genre of imitation of the natural (with none of the overly- conventional which the modern arts sometimes emphasize in works from antiquity: that is what is commonly called the Greek ideal).
£5200
