Canova Plaster Cast Gallery

When Antonio Canova died, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Sartori decided either to close the Study in Rome where many masterpieces were created or to move all the plaster casts, the unsold Marbles, the paintings, the Sketches and all what was in the warehouses, to Possagno. In order to host all the above mentioned collections, Sartori arranged to build a Gallery, near the artist’s native home. This allowed the tourists and the scholars to admire all of Canova’s works. In 1832 Sartori charged the Venetian architect Francesco Lazzari to plan the construction of the "Collection of plaster casts". In 1957 Canova's work found a more adequate placing thanks to a new building constructed by the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa. The tall cubic form of his addition admits light through windows in the top four corners of two connecting chambers, creating a luminous environment. Unbroken walls without windows in the lower portions receive shadow-silhouettes of the plaster casts.