Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Consiglia Giugliano
Le biografie del Canova nell'Ottocento [Canova's biographies in the 19th Century]
Loffredo editore, 2003
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N.B. On Antonio
Canova see also in this blog: Antonio D'Este, Memoirs
of Antonio Canova; Pietro Giordani, Panegyric
to Antonio Canova; Melchior Missirini, On
the Life of Antonio Canova, Artworks
seized in Italy during Napoleonic Campaigns 1796-1814 and Recovered by Antonio
Canova 1815 and The
Artist and his Death. Wills by European Artists from the Late Middle Ages to
the Twentieth Century.
[1] Several dozens of biographies have been written on the figure and the work of Antonio Canova, especially in the years immediately following his death, occurred in 1822. In recent years they have been rediscovered and were the subject of several publications. The Research Institute for the Study of Canova and Neoclassicism, for example, has published a series reprinting one of them every year as a facsimile (see notes affixed to Faustino Tadini Le sculture e le pitture di Antonio Canova pubblicate fino a quest’anno 1795). When we bought the volume by Consiglia Giugliano, we expected an interesting critical review of those biographies. We were truly disappointed. This is actually a modest and not fully reflected job, with a sloppy graphic design and inadequate editorial project, while it is evident that even the original drafting has not been sufficiently edited prior to publication. Overall, probably one of those books that appeared mainly to enrich the curriculum of the author, also with a view to support an application for some chair of an upper secondary school. And – mind you - there would be nothing especially wrong with that. If there was a specific issue, however, which cannot be ignored ...
[2] We were struck in particular by the variety of styles with which the various biographies were described and commented, and so we conducted some research. Just a little 'patience' sufficed to discover, for example, that the text on the ‘Roman Studies’ by C.L. Fernow is, at best, a transcript with some occasional replacement of words of the essay Le obiezioni della critica tedesca: il Saggio su Canova di C.L. Fernow, published in 1973 by Gianna Piantoni in Studi canoviani nn. 1-2. At worst, whole pages are copied word for word, comma for comma. An example: from page 47 last paragragh to end page 49 (with the exclusion of the last paragraph) the "work" by Giugliano is a verbatim copy from the above mentioned survey (pp. 22, penultimate paragraph - p. 25, second row). More or less, the same applies with regard to the discussion of the Opere di scultura e plastica di Antonio Canova, written by Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi. It is for a good part a more or less literal paraphrase of a similar written by Francesca Romana Fratini, also published in the issue 1-2 of Studi canoviani. Here, at least, there is some effort of imagination: phrases mentioned in a footnote by Fratini become part of the main text of Giugliano, and vice versa: nevertheless, the sentences remain identical. It goes without saying that, in both cases, the original texts have not been mentioned. So, at the very end we convinced ourselves that with a little patience it would have not been impossible to eventually trace all "sources" used by Giugliano for other biographies. We came to the conclusion that it would have not been worth trying it.
[3] Yet the topic is of great interest, leading to a circulation of the work also abroad. By clicking on the link you can see the list of prestigious international libraries in which the book is available: http://www.worldcat.org/title/biografie-del-canova-nellottocento/oclc/54957016
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