About
The home of a neoclassical master is now a shrine to his art.
The house-museum, a typical 17th-century Venetian building, is comprised of different sectors which visitors can explore. The private quarters and laboratory, each partially filled with Canova’s original furniture, display a large collection of paintings and hand drawn sketches. The true attraction of the museum is the gypsotheque, a neoclassical barrel-vaulted gallery which holds most of the plaster cast models which the artist made for various subjects. There is also the modern wing, perfectly integrated into the building’s main body and designed by Italian architect Carlo Scarpa in 1957, which holds a mixed collection of terra cotta sketches and plaster models, some of them never realized, and some lost or destroyed, such as a fabled George Washington statue.
