354 



PALLADIO'S VILLA AT MASER AND POSSAGNO, TREVISO. 



anticipates the old French painter who told his pupil that he might go to Italy and see the 

 Old Masters, but that " if he took those old bovs seriously he was a lost man." 



Less than ten miles north-west of Maser on the commencing slopes of the mountains is the 

 little village of Possagno, which, as the birthplace of Canova, draws visitors from all parts. 

 With the true home love of the mountain-born the great sculptor studied to endow his native 

 village with some magnet of attraction. The church which he built, a Greek Doric version 

 of the Pantheon, may be a somewhat dull conception, but the house which he occupied, with the 

 large gallery addition containing casts of his works, well deserves a visit. 



To each age its own art ; and though we no longer pretend to much interest in the 

 classicalities of the early nineteenth century, we can at least acknowledge that Canova stood for 

 something better than the low standard of Vittoria, whose work he must have often seen as a 

 boy in this villa of Maser, which would be for the hardy native no more than easy walking 

 distance away. In the centre of the gallery is a group of the original casts of those seated female 

 figures, such as the Pauline Borghese, in which the sculptor appears, perhaps, at his best. 

 There is delicacy and charm in this presentation of Napoleon's sister as Venus Vincitrice. 



The Villa Carlotta, on lake Como, contains the work which makes the widest public appeal, 

 the Amor and Psyche, which is apparently only represented in this gallery by a small sketch in wax. 

 Over this group, perpetuated by countless copies and photographs from every conceivable point 

 of view, many, like Polonius, wag their beards, repeating, ' This is the very ecstasy of love." 

 Compare it with Bernini's Apollo and Daphne of the early years of the seventeenth century, or 

 imagine the twentieth century rendering of the same idea, and we are face to face with that 

 " glass of fashion and mould of form " which ever hampers art in holding up an unclouded 

 mirror to Nature. The rounded prettiness of Canova 's group would never content the present 

 school of thought, and by so much Canova must be held to have been the captive of his age. 

 One or two of the monuments show some decorative idea, but the limited outlook of the time, 

 with its very partial grasp of the realities of Greek and Roman art, discouraged any freedom 

 of design that might otherwise have mitigated the dulness of the repressive generation that 

 followed the revolutionary outbreak. 



In architecture and sculpture alike it was a very dead epoch. Great events were in 

 preparation, and for two generations the genius of the race was to be engaged in the work of 

 liberation. When, in the fulness of time, the art instinct of Italy is fully awake, it will surely be to 

 the earlier, and greater, works of the golden age that she will turn for inspiration. A. T. B. 



370. VILLA DI MASER : DETAIL OF STUCCOSE. 



