Until 10th June 2008, the Scuderie del Quirinale (presidential palace) of Rome will be the seat of a really important exhibition, dedicated to the 19th century great art.
The title of the exhibition is “From Canova to the Fourth State”, and it’s the first time that our country, from centuries the capital of art and culture, houses an exhibition which shows as protagonist the European 19th century painting and carving.
At Scuderie del Quirinale of Rome, the exhibition’s visitors will come face to face with just 100 masterpieces which the exhibition’s organizers, Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli, Fernando Mazzocca and Carlo Sisi, have carefully selected between the amazing artworks that the numerous artistic production of the 19th century left us.

The paintings have been branched and exposed in different divisions, and between them, in the main sections, the great sculptures by such artists as Canova, Bartolini and Duprè stand out .
The exhibition’s purpose is to underline the importance of a century which deeply shaped history and art of our country, and which, between historical and social events of different order, at its time and for too long, has obfuscated the immense beauty and importance of our artists.
When people already thought that Italy had lost its world supremacy in art, Canova was carving some of the today’s most admired and appreciated sculptures in the world, and the Italian paintings took shape of one of the most famous paintings in history “Il Quarto Stato” by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo.

The Galleria Borghese in Rome will house until the 3rd of February an exhibition completely dedicated to Antonio Canova and his masterpiece, the “Venere Vincitrice“.

The exhibition is included in the series of “10 Great Exhibitions” started in May 2006 with an exposition dedicated to Raphael.

The one dedicated to Canova is the second of the

and it has been instituted to celebrate his great art in occasion of the 250° anniversary of his birth and the 200 years of Canova’s masterpiece, the absolute star of the exhibition: Paolina Bonaparte as Venere Vincitrice.

La Venere Vincitrice, work of whom the Galleria Borghese is most proud, is a marble sculpture commissioned to Canova by the Borghese family, with whom the artist had a long relationship, and it’s not a simple sculptured portrait but it’s a fine, elegant, careful celebration of the beautiful and the victory, it’s a Paolina Bonaparte represented as a goddess.