Two Canovas, Two Sets of Lovers: An Art Mystery Solved

I first fell in love with the work of Italian neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova when I visited Paris in 2000 and saw his take on one of my favorite Greek myths. The passionately entwined figures of Psyche and her husband Eros brought the story of love, death, jealousy and redemption to life with a poignancy that took my breath away. So when I saw a miniature of the sculpture in an antique shop near the center of town in Montpellier, I had to bring it back with me.

But recently, I noticed something about my sculpture that led me to believe it wasn’t an exact replica of the one in the Louvre. In the sculpture housed in the Louvre, the cloth covering Psyche’s loins is short - showing the length of her legs. The cloth in my sculpture covers her legs to the ankles. I wondered, what prompted the artist to take such liberty with Canova’s work. Were Psyche’s legs too much for him? Did he want to dress her a bit more modestly? Was he better at carving cloth from stone than he was at carving a woman’s legs? (I’m assuming that the person who carved my miniature was male, but I could absolutely be wrong.)

Tonight I got my answer. While browsing online through the sculpture collections at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, I saw a later copy of the same sculpture. Until that moment, I was unaware that Canova had executed a second rendition of the sculpture - this time with the more modest, classically executed loin covering.

Images from left to right: The 1787 original by Canova housed in the Louvre; The 1796 version housed in the Hermitage; My miniature by an unknown artist; detail of Psyche’s loin covering on my miniature

Of course, this isn’t news to you art buffs. Some of you are probably going, “duh!” right now. But I never took an art history class. I’m honestly not much of a visual art person. But occasionally I stumble across something that really strikes my fancy. This was one of those things. I didn’t really think to dig through its history until I came across the answer by happenstance.

Sometimes I think that’s the way art was meant to be enjoyed - with a sense of discovery that no textbook can give you.