All Objects

In December 1817, Canova produced a second three-dimensional sketch for the George Washington, which he described as “much superior to my first idea.” The body is more upright and the position of the legs reversed. Instead of a toga, the president wears ancient armor. He is shown writing, as in the two drawings, and with a crown and scepter on the floor, having relinquished his command. On a tablet is the Latin inscription LEX / PATRIA / LIBERTAS (Law, Homeland, Liberty).

In the final sketch for the sculpture, Canova created a more finished model. Here, the figure’s armor is highly decorated. The artist replaced the crown and scepter, seen in the second bozzetto, with a sword and baton more appropriate for a republican statesman. The words on the tablet are also reordered: PATRIA / LIBERTAS / ET LEX (Homeland, Liberty, and Law).

While at work on the George Washington, Canova was also thinking about a bronze equestrian monument of King Charles III for Naples. This sheet shows drawings for both commissions. The Washington is shown with two variants of his outstretched arms.

In 1815, Pope Pius VII sent Canova to Paris and London to secure the restitution of artworks taken from Rome by Napoleon. In gratitude, the pope made the artist Marquis of Ischia a year later. While in London, Canova posed for Thomas Lawrence, who showed this portrait at the Royal Academy in 1816. Lawrence reworked the portrait during a second sitting in Rome, in 1819. Dressed as a wealthy gentleman, Canova is shown at the time he was working on the Washington sculpture.

This monumental terracotta bust is likely the one made from life by Giuseppe Ceracchi. The imposing representation of the president was brought back to Europe by the sculptor and, after his death, belonged to his Austrian widow, Theresa, who eventually sold it. This bust is probably the prototype from which all other Ceracchi busts of Washington were produced.

In 1784, through the intercession of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who were in Paris, the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon was commissioned to carve a full-length marble statue of George Washington for the State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia. Houdon traveled to America, and stayed for a fortnight at Mount Vernon, in October 1785. While there, he created a terracotta bust of Washington and executed a life mask of him. Years later, Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Eleanor Parke “Nelly” Custis Lewis, recalled this scene from her childhood:

[I] found the General extended on his back on a large table, a sheet over him, except his face, on which Houdon was engaged in putting on plaster to form the cast. Quills were in the nostrils. I was very much alarmed until I was told it was a bust, a likeness of the General, & would not injure him.

Houdon traveled back to Paris with the life mask, possibly this exemplar, to use for his marble sculpture, which was completed in 1792 and unveiled in Richmond in 1796.

Most of Canova’s sculptures were recorded in print after they were created, assuring the dissemination of the work’s image throughout Europe, following the shipment of the marble sculpture to North Carolina. This print and another print were produced after the George Washington.