Reclining Naiad

Antonio Canova

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is a variant of the Reclining Venus with Cupid, now in Buckingham Palace, which was made for Lord Cawdor in 1814 and ceded by him to the Prince Regent. Our work, commissioned by the fourth earl of Darnley, was completed by Canova's assistents after his death and delivered to the earl at Cobham Hall in Kent in 1824. The original plaster model for the Naiad, completed in 1817, is in the Gipsoteca di Possagno. Compositional prototypes include Canova's Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix and an ancient Hermaphrodite, both in the Borghese Gallery, Rome. Numerous slight indentations throughout the marble may be visible remains of the pointing system.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art