CANOVA Four Tempos vol. III, published by 5 Continents Editions in 2022, is the third volume in a sustained editorial project on Antonio Canova’s plaster casts at the Gypsotheca in Possagno. Luigi Spina photographs these sculptures not as inert surrogates for the finished works, but as objects whose surfaces, scale, and signs of making remain vividly present. The book is in English, comprises 80 pages, and measures 24 × 30 cm.
Its sequence begins with the Three Graces, where Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia appear in a delicately interwoven embrace. From there, the selection moves through works that extend Canova’s classical vocabulary across different histories and patrons: George Washington as a Roman potentate, the only sculpture he made for an overseas patron; Elisa Baciocchi Bonaparte as the Muse Polyhymnia; the Dancer made for Joséphine de Beauharnais; the Venus Italica, shaped by Canova’s study of several antique models; and the Sleeping Nymph.
The distinctive force of Spina’s photographic research lies in its attention to the bronze nails embedded in the plaster. These modest technical markers become prompts for sustained reflection on translation, workshop practice, and the passage from model to sculpture. Rather than smoothing away process in pursuit of an idealized classical image, the photographs keep the labor of making within the field of vision. An introductory text by Vittorio Sgarbi accompanies the images, adding an art-historical frame without displacing their material concentration.
For collectors, this volume is significant as a focused photographic study of a particular museum collection and of the working evidence contained within it. Its value lies in the encounter between a major Neoclassical sculptor’s subjects, the historical identities attached to them, and a contemporary photographer’s disciplined attention to surface and technique. Read alongside the other volumes in the Canova project, it offers a precise, visually coherent contribution to the photobook’s ongoing conversation with sculpture.
