Museo Gipsoteca Canoviano – Possagno

Description

The Museo Gipsoteca Canoviano complex in Possagno (Treviso) is located at the foot of mount Grappa in the birthplace of the celebrated neo-classical sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822). The artist is celebrated and remembered in three key places: his birthplace, the gipsoteca and the temple.
He often returned to visit the house of his birth and would paint in a studio in the small tower; today it displays paintings, watercolours, oil paintings, drawings, engravings, belongings and many memories. The garden, with a vast adjoining park, separates the house from the museum.
The gipsoteca (from the Greek for “collection of plaster casts”) has gathered all the work from the sculptor’s studio in Rome: models, plaster casts, terracotta maquettes, marbles, colossal statue groups, funeral monuments and bas-reliefs are all displayed in the evocative 19^th century wing. Other works, of rare beauty, such as The Three Gracesand Psyche revived by Cupid’s Kiss can be admired in the light-filled wing designed by Carlo Scarpa (1957) to enlarge the Museum.
Other rooms in the Canova house have been restored inside the museum complex and host the multimedia and education section and the new wing, designed by Gemin, with spaces for exhibitions and conferences.