Antonio Canova's wingless angel comes to light at the Tefaf New York

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Eve M. Kahn

A plaster copy of one of the 18th-century Italian sculptor Antonio Canova’s works will go on public view on Oct. 28 at the Tefaf New York show at the Park Avenue Armory. Credit Nicholas Knight

The 18th-century Italian sculptor Antonio Canova made only a few plaster copies of his marble statues, as gifts for friends and patrons. One of the plaster works, which had ended up largely forgotten at a villa near Florence, will go on public view on Oct. 28 at the Tefaf New York show at the Park Avenue Armory. Trinity Fine Art, a Milan gallery, has priced it at $4 million. It represents a wingless angel, about five feet tall, pressing one hand to a brow in a gesture of grief. The original marble version, which has wings, was carved around 1790 as part of a monument to Pope Clement XIII at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Canova cast the plaster copy for his patron Girolamo Zulian, a Venetian ambassador in Rome. [More]