One of the most celebrated sculptors of the Classicist period, Antonio Canova (1757–1822) was in his lifetime touted as the Phidias of the modern era. Fascinated by Hellenistic sculpture like many of his contemporaries, he was a fashionable artist receiving commissions from the elite of his times, including Princess Izabela Lubomirska herself. It was for her that he made the famous statue of Prince Henryk Lubomirski as Cupid cut in marble, kept at the Łańcut Castle-Museum. In 2007, the sculpture left the collection for the first time in the last 200 years to travel to Italy, where it graced the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth. Today, it is on view on an extraordinary exhibition in Cracow.
The show, which brings together Canova’s other works as well (gypsum and terracotta sculptures, paintings and prints), is a joint project of the National Museum in Cracow, the Łańcut Castle-Museum, the Canova Foundation in Possagno, Museo Gipsoteca Canoviana in Possagno and the Italian Institute in Cracow.

www.muzeum.krakow.pl