Compatriots of Canova 1882

Noè Bordignon painted ‘Compatriots of Canova’ with oils on canvas; we don’t know exactly when, but probably sometime around the turn of the century. The painting depicts the monument to Antonio Canova, the great Neoclassical sculptor, in the Frari church in Venice. In the foreground Bordignon shows us ordinary people, some of whom are clearly poor. Looking at this image, we must ask what it was supposed to mean for the artist, and for the Venetian public of the time, to show these ‘compatriots of Canova’ in the presence of the great man’s monument. Italy had only recently unified, and Venice, once the capital of a great republic, was now a regional city in a new nation-state. Was Bordignon implying that Canova somehow belonged to these people, that his legacy was also theirs? Was he asking whether the new Italy would provide for its poor? Was he perhaps critiquing the institutions of art and the elitism of Neoclassical taste? These are questions that the historian of art can begin to answer by researching the social and institutional context in which Bordignon painted.