Biography of Antonio Canova 1757-1822

Memorials of Francis Chantrey RA in Hallamshire and Elsewhere Part V London Life and Works. Montgomery, whose opinions I quote the more freely, not merely because he has himself looked upon sculpture with a poet's eye, but also because he oft endeavoured to excite a similar taste in his gifted friend-says, "Nothing in sculpture is truly excellent but that which is pre-eminently so, because nothing less than the most successful strokes of the happiest chisel can powerfully affect the spectator, fix him in dumb astonishment, touch his heart strings with tender emotion, stir thought from its depths into ardent and earnest exercise. I appeal to all who hear me, whether, among a hundred of the monuments in our cathedrals, and the statues in our public places, they ever met with more than one or two that laid hold of their imagination, so as to haunt it both in retirement and in society? "Such are the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, and other inestimable relics of antiquity; such the Moses and David of Michael Angelo; and such- ( to give an English example worthy to be named with these, judging solely by the power which it exercises over the purest and most universal of human sympathies, -- sympathies which can no more be bribed by artifice than they can help yielding to the impulse of nature ) -such, I say, is the simple memorial by our own Chantrey (age 35), in Lichfield Cathedral [Map], of two children that were 'lovely in their lives, and in death are undivided. Of these specimens, it may be affirmed, that they have shown how the narrow bonds of vulgar precedent may be left as far behind as a star in the heavens leaves a meteor in the air."¹ There is not, indeed, a more exquisite group in the whole range of modern sculpture than Chantrey's "Two Children" in marble. The sisters lie asleep in each others arms in the most unconstrained and graceful repose. The snowdrops which the youngest had plucked are undropped from her hand, and both are images of artless beauty, and innocent and unaffected race. Such was the press to see these children in the London Exhibition, that there was no getting near them: mothers, with tears in their eyes, lingered, and went away, and returned; while Canova's (age 59) now far-famed figures of Hebe and Terpsichore stood almost unnoticed by their side. Chantrey modelled two other figures of this class, viz., a "Sleeping Child," the daughter of Sir Thos. Dyke Acland; and a "Reposing Infant," for Mr. Boswell, of Auchinleck.

Note 1. "Lectures on Poetry," p. 20.