220-1 - RARE INTALIA OF NAPOLEON I AS MARS THE PEACEMAKER, AFTER CANOVA

RARE INTALIA OF NAPOLEON I AS MARS THE PEACEMAKER, AFTER CANOVA An oval intalia in translucent orange carnelian depicting Emperor Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, after a marble sculpture by Antonio Canova; unsigned. The Emperor is depicted standing, completely nude, on a finely traced ground line. His weight rests on one leg, the other bent backward, in the contrapposto pose inherited from ancient statuary. With one outstretched hand, he presents a globe surmounted by a winged Victory; with the other, he holds a long staff that rises to the full height of the stone. The chlamys, fastened at the shoulder, falls in vertical folds along the body and forms a draped backdrop behind the staff. The head, with short, curly hair in the style of Roman portraits, is idealized and turned toward Victory. The engraver has rendered the anatomical form with great precision—the pectoral muscles, abdominal muscles, knees, and calf muscles—as well as the tiny figure of Victory, which is perfectly legible in the print. Rome (Italy), circa 1810–1830. H. 2.4 x W. 1.6 cm. Related Works - Antonio Canova, Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, 1806, London, Aspley House, former Wellington Collection. - Napoleon as Mars, Disarmed and the Peacemaker, engraved by Antonio Ricciani after Canova’s marble, drawing by Giovanni Tognoli, early 19th century (see illustration). History THE MODEL: A MARBLE SCULPTURE BY CANOVA Summoned to Paris in 1802 to sculpt a portrait of the First Consul, Antonio Canova (1757–1822) began work in Rome as early as 1803 on a colossal statue of Napoleon as a heroic nude, depicted as Mars the Peacemaker. The sovereign holds a globe surmounted by a gilded Victory in his right hand and a long staff in his left; the chlamys falls from his left shoulder, and a torso bearing a sheathed sword supports the figure. The marble statue, standing 3.45 meters tall, was completed in 1806. Upon its arrival in Paris in 1811 and its placement in the Napoleon Museum at the Louvre, the work displeased its subject, who had it concealed behind a partition. A bronze cast was made around the same time for the Kingdom of Italy; it now stands in the courtyard of the Brera Palace in Milan. In 1816, the British government acquired the marble version from Louis XVIII; the Prince Regent presented it to the Duke of Wellington, who installed it the following year in the stairwell of his London residence. It is still preserved today in London, at Aspley House. LUIGI PICHLER, CANOVA’S ENGRAVER Luigi Pichler (Rome, 1773–1854) was the last and most accomplished member of a dynasty of engravers on precious stones. The son of Antonio Pichler (1697–1779), who had come from Tyrol to settle first in Naples and then in Rome, he was trained by his half-brother Giovanni (1734–1791), the most sought-after engraver among Grand Tour travelers, and studied for four years under the painter Domenico De Angelis. Upon Giovanni’s death in 1791, he took over the family workshop. A member of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1808 and a graduate of the Accademia di San Luca in 1812, he was appointed professor of gemstone engraving at the Vienna Academy in 1818 and worked for Emperor Francis I before returning to Rome in 1850. His reputation was such that the jeweler to the French court, François-Regnault Nitot, attempted to lure him to Paris. An engraver who worked almost exclusively in intaglio, he signed his work in Greek letters: Λ. ΠΙΧΛΕΡ. Pichler, along with the other Roman engravers of his generation, was the principal interpreter of Canova’s work in the field of glyptics: notably, he engraved the *Venus Italica* at the Pitti Palace, the *Theseus Defeating the Centaur* in Vienna, the *Perseus*, and the *Paris*. He also created an intaglio signed Λ. ΠΙΧΛΕΡ based on the *Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker*, now housed in Bucharest at the Numismatic Cabinet of the Romanian Academy. It is this engraved model, rather than the marble sculpture itself, that serves as the basis for the intaglio presented here. THE PAOLETTI IMPRINTS Bartolomeo Paoletti (1757–1834) and his son Pietro (1801–1847) ran the city’s most renowned imprint workshop at 49 Piazza di Spagna in Rome. Using glass matrices—the stampi—derived from ancient and modern intaglios and cameos, they mass-produced scagliola impressions, which were assembled into book-like cases and intended for scholars, collectors, and travelers on the Grand Tour. In addition to ancient gems, their series give prominence to contemporary art, with sets dedicated to the “works of Canova” and the “works of Luigi Pichler.” The studio’s collection—comprising more than 7,000 matrices used from 1821 to 1844–1845 and accompanied by its handwritten catalog—was acquired in 1931 by the