A digital archive of Canova's works at the Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa

The Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa and the company Factum Arte have announced the beginning of a collaboration to create a digital archive of the works of Antonio Canova, through the application of new technologies and the possibility of implementing a program of direct and permanent enjoyment of some works that, for safety and conservation reasons, are not on public display.

“The desire, which is also a strong necessity, is to make known to the public that part of the heritage that the city preserves but cannot enjoy for conservation reasons,” explains Chiara Casarin, director of the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa: “the possibility of expanding the permanent collection in the rooms open to the public through digitization and the use of the most innovative tools, allows us to finally ’open’ the doors of Antonio Canova’s atelier not only to scholars of the subject but also to museum visitors.”

Factum Arte’s team, with Factum Foundation’s digital expertise and tools, analyzed and recorded Antonio Canova’s sketch of the Three Graces, through the photogrammetric technique and through the Nub3D Sidio and Breukmann white light scanners, to create, first virtually and later materially, a facsimile of it that would allow for facilitated loan and study.

The work began with the three-dimensional scanning and digitization of the entire corpus of Canova’s nearly 2,000 drawings that the museum holds thanks to the donation of Monsignor Giambattista Sartori, the sculptor’s half-brother.
The precious collection is divided into two major categories: the first includes studies from antiquity and academies of male and female nudes, to which the artist devoted himself constantly, especially at the end of the 18th century; the second category, so-called of thoughts, deals with the drawings of invention that Canova entrusted to notebooks.
The collection consists of ten albums and eight notebooks and is kept at the Drawings and Prints Cabinet of the Civic Museum and can be consulted by appointment only.

“The data obtained from such investigations,” the director continues, “will allow us to shed new light on the artist’s works, his working methods, his use of materials and tools, and the different creative phases, thus writing an unprecedented chapter on the knowledge of Antonio Canova and heralding innovative synergies between the museum and its visitors.”

The project also includes the creation of facsimiles of two albums of drawings that will finally become available for display in the Canova Hall, expanding the permanent exhibition itinerary of the Civic Museum. For Giovanni Cunico, Councillor for Culture: "This is an operation that projects the Civic Museum of Bassano into the future, a first step in the evolution of a historical institution thanks to absolutely innovative tools. An element of particular prestige is the entrusting of this first operation to enhance the cultural and historical heritage that the city of Bassano preserves to Factum Arte, one of the most authoritative digital mediation companies in the world. We are concretely demonstrating that our city is fully capable of accepting great challenges in the field of innovation, on a par with artistic realities such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Grand Palais in Paris and La Fondazione Cini in Venice, with which Factum Arte has collaborated."

Image: the Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa. Credit

A digital archive of Canova's works at the Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa

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