Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova site features

Scarpa's wing

Light cut in at the corners and along the join between wall and ceiling. It is a lesson in how to light sculpture, and architects visit who have no particular interest in Canova.

The plaster models

Full-size originals with the metal reference pins still set in them — the points a carver measured from to cut the marble. Seeing the method is the reason to come.

The clay sketches

Bozzetti: small, rapid, and completely unlike the finished marbles. The best evidence anywhere of how Canova actually worked out a composition.

The large groups

The full-size plasters of works whose marbles are now in the Louvre, the Hermitage and the Vatican. In several cases the plaster is the only version you can see up close.

Canova's birthplace

Included in the ticket: the house, his tools, and the plain room a stonecutter's son grew up in.