One of the last sculptures created by Antonio Canova before he died in 1822–Mary Magdalene–has been rediscovered. It’s expected to fetch up to $10 million at auction in July. The neoclassical sculpture ‘Maddalena Giacente’ (Recumbent Magdalene), commissioned by the Earl of Liverpool, then British prime minister, took three years to carve. The sculpture of Mary Magdalene in a state of religious ecstasy was completed just before Canova’s death in 1822.
In a statement, Dr. Mario Guderzo, a prominent Canova scholar and former director of Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova, said it is a miracle that Antonio Canova’s long-lost masterpiece has been found. Scholars have been looking for this work for decades, so its discovery is of fundamental importance for the history of collecting and the history of art.
Canova wrote in 1819 about the Recumbent Magdalene: ‘I exhibited another model of a second Magdalene lying on the ground and almost fainting from the pain of her penitence, a subject I appreciate very much, and which has earned me a lot of praise from the public’. The sculpture is currently on display at Christies’ London. It will travel to New York and Hong Kong.
In his 30-plus year career, Donald Johnson, Christie’s international head of sculpture, called the rediscovery ‘a highlight’. He noted: ‘This sculpture represents a fully documented commission from a major figure in British history, Lord Liverpool, whose purchase of the Magdalene represents the affection that British collectors have shown for the great neoclassical artist Antonio Canova’.
‘It was one of the highlights of the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester in 1857…it was sold with the contents of a house to a gentleman…there was a fire at the house. He had an auction of the contents, and by the time that auction happened in 1938, the identity was lost and she was just referred to as a classical figure’.
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