ON 13 OCTOBER 1822, perhaps the most famous and lauded artist of the age breathed his last. The sculptor Antonio Canova had worked for popes, royalty and an emperor. He had sculpted the first president of the United States and made work for a British prime minister, and his patrons included nobles — old and new — across Europe.
No painter could touch him for renown, and many drew inspiration from his work. Writers too: Keats wrote an ode inspired by his 1787 statue (and, in an instance of one degree of separation, the
