Justice
1792
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- Artgate Fondazione Cariplo
- Rights
- CC BY-SA 3.0, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
About this work
The bas-relief of the Goddess of Justice is part of a group of thirteen plaster casts – representing allegorical figures, scenes inspired by the Iliad, the Odyssey and Phaedo, and depicting two works of mercy – in the Foundation’s Congress Centre. The reliefs were executed by Canova as a gift for Abbondio Rezzonico, a member of the Roman Senate, between 1793 and 1795. Rezzonico had already commissioned from the sculptor the commemorative monument to his uncle Pope Clement XIII, which was erected in St. Peter’s but not unveiled until 1792, twenty-three years after the Pope’s death. In 1781, the Veneto artist had executed for the Senator the statuette Apollo Crowning Himself now held by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Evidently the two men were on very friendly terms, probably also because they were both from the Veneto region. A frequenter of Rome artistic circles, Rezzonico also commissioned works from Piranesi and Pompeo Batoni – who immortalised him in a portrait now in the Museo di Bassano del Grappa. The bas-reliefs were hung in Villa Rezzonico at Bassano to create a “Canovian room”, as attested by 19th-century sources, similar to those in other aristocratic residences in…
