Antonio Canova. L’invenzione della bellezza Antonio Canova. The Invention of Beauty
New York, NY October 2009 - The Marilena Ferrari-FMR House of Fine Art and Foundation is set to release the art book Antonio Canova. L’invenzione della bellezza this Fall. Only 29 copies of the work will be made, four of which will be donated to prestigious libraries and museums across the world. The remaining copies will available for private purchase.
Description of the work, Antonio Canova. L’invenzione della bellezza
The cover of this work features a bas-relief in marble depicting a detail of Canova’s work, The Graces and Venus dancing in front of Mars, which is housed in the Canova Museum in Possagno, near Treviso. The fine white marble comes from the Fantiscritti quarry in Carrara, the same one that supplied Antonio Canova himself. The bas-relief was hand-executed using an antique technique employing a violin drill at the artistic workshop of Mariagrazia Barattini of Carrara.
The bas-relief is set into a background of silk brocade interwoven with gold threads, hand-woven on eighteenth-century frames and warpers by Luigi Bevilacqua in Venice.
On the inside, on special pure fine Velata cotton paper in a round shape embellished with the “Antonio Canova” watermark, hand-executed at the Cartiere Magnani of Pescia, texts by the sculptor’s contemporaries have been hand-printed on a manual press.
The texts are accompanied by 26 plates depicting the tempera works of Canova, all applied by hand and printed by using the lithoscreenprinting technique, by 5 etchings and 77 original photographs of Canova’s works taken by Mimmo Jodice, one of the premier contemporary Italian photographers.
The entire range of the printing work involving a number of ancient techniques was carried out by fine art printers Luigi Berardinelli of Verona.
Every single component of the work was hand-bound and assembled by Bruno Superti of the Arte del Libro bookbinding workshop in Todi.
Each work is accompanied by certificates of authenticity, quality and guarantee, vouching for the professionalism of each individual master craftsman who contributed to the creation of this work. These certificates were also hand-written by calligrapher Cinzia Castelli of Jesi.
The paper
The texts, plates, photographs, and flyleaves are printed on different kinds of carefully selected paper. In accordance with an age-old tradition, Cartiere Magnani of Pescia has produced the “Velata” paper, on which the texts are printed. It is a fine 250g pure cotton paper, hand-made on a frame using a Renaissance technique and decorated with a specialized “Antonio Canova” watermark. Fine marbled paper made using an eighteenth-century technique by the Laura Berretti workshop in Tuscany, decorates the flyleaves that join the body of the book to its cover.
The photographer
Born in Naples, Mimmo Jodice is an Italian avant-garde photographer who has stood as an indefatigable protagonist of the cultural debate since the Sixties. One of the first photographers in Italy to articulate the centrality of the image in contemporary culture, Jodice has brought Italian photography international renown. He is known especially for his haunting photographs of Naples, capturing its jarring mixture of past and present, beauty and dilapidation, and for documenting the Conceptual art scene in Italy. For “Antonio Canova. L’invenzione della bellezza”, Jodice chose to be radiantly unfaithful to accuracy of representation, opting instead for a vision which is deliberately and declaredly individualized, but also an authoritative vision, a motivated and necessitated one, conceptually elucidated and not merely aestheticizing. In this book, Jodice chose a position whereby he might sound the works, as well as, and more importantly, their author’s soul. Canova’s work is conveyed to us through photographs that are works of art in their own right.
The photographs
The silence of his darkroom provided Mimmo Jodice with the perfect conditions for capturing the sensual rapport that Canova developed with his statues. Jodice -- a contemporary genius in his own right -- stood before the genius of the past with proud humility, contemplating the images and reinterpreting them with his black and white photographs, to achieve their portrayal to perfection. Jodice’s meticulous work, which captures surfaces contrasted by light that pulsate with nerves and blood, gives rise to a work-of-art equal in excellence to the original that inspired it.
Release date: Fall 2009
Hardcover 17’’ x 28’’/ 248 pages
Price: Euro 140,000
