A Rare Antique Pair of Grand Tour Patinated Bronze allegorical seated Putto after Italian Neoclassical Artist Antonio Canova, complete with their original well veined Sienna Marble stepped rectangular bases. Circa second quarter of the Nineteenth Century. 

Seated views depicting one writing, the other studying an atlas, both seated on ornate tasseled pillows. 

Condition: Good condition with no losses anywhere, nice surface patination. The colour when held on bright light is a very dark olive green. Few tiny flea bites to marble bases, baise underneath has been replaced, nicely done. 

Width: (at marble base) 5.5” (14cm). Height: (entire) 7.5” (19cm). Depth: (at marble base) 4.25” (10.75cm). 

Shipped to Fort Worth, Texas, USA. 

Worldwide Store to door shipping offered. 

Antonio Canova was born in northern Italy in the small town of Possagno in 1757 to a family of sculptors and stonecutters, including his grandfather, Pasino Canova, and his father, Pietro. Nineteenth-century biographies of the artist, in a tradition dating back to the Renaissance, suggest Canova’s artistic talent revealed itself at an early age, by the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to the sculptor Giuseppe Bernardi, who was based first in Pagnano, near Asolo, then Venice. After Bernardi’s death in 1774, Canova entered the studio of Bernardi’s nephew, Giovanni Ferrari. In Venice, Canova was heavily influenced by casts of ancient works that he saw, particularly those in the collection of Filippo Farsetti, for whom he completed his first independent work, Two Baskets of Fruit (1774; Museo Correr, Venice). Larger, freestanding figural works followed, including Eurydice and Orpheus, completed for Senator Giovanni Falier in 1775–77 (Museo Correr), and Daedalus and Icarus, 1778–79 (Museo Correr), for Procurator Pietro Pisani. 

In 1779–80, Canova made the Grand Tour of Italy, where he saw the great collections of art in Bologna, Florence, Rome, and Naples, an experience he recorded in a travel diary. In 1781, he established his own studio in Rome. 

Wonderful pair, very seldom offered, usually these are found as singles.