Antonio’s Ladies

The Italian Neo-classical sculptor Antonio Canova (1857-1922) did many sculptures in his career, but in no subject did he excel more than in the reclining female nude. He did a few of them, perhaps even this one in the Palazzo Borromeo on Isola Bella. If you live in the United States you can see one –Reclining Naiad–in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Like this one, the woman’s bottom is put on especially pert display. The MOMA nude lies on a panther’s pelt, adding an extra erotic charge, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you live in the UK, you’ll find another at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and if you’re friends with royalty you can find yet another in Buckingham Palace. Say hi to Liz for me, will you? That one’s being serenaded by a cupid with a harp. In Rome you can find Canova’s famous semi-nude of Pauline Borghese, in, logically enough, the Palazzo Borghese Museum. In the same place you can see the sculpture that inspired Canova, a sleeping  Hermaphrodite from the Hellenistic period, around the second century BCE. If you want to thank him you can go to Venice and visit his monumental tomb in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, which locals simply call, thankfully, the Frari.