Photo: Sonse · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Atelier Canova Tadolini

Historic sculpture studio on Via del Babuino, once belonging to Canova and the Tadolini family, with plasters, models and sculptures, now also housing a café-restaurant.

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About the museum

In January 1818 Antonio Canova, then at the height of his European fame, guaranteed with his signature the lease of his sculpture studio, at the corner of Via del Babuino and Via dei Greci, in favour of his favourite pupil Adamo Tadolini. The premises, in a neighbourhood traditionally animated by artists’ workshops, had already been occupied by Canova, who had completed numerous commissions there. An intense working relationship developed between the two: Canova entrusted Adamo with several commissions, including the reproduction of his most famous works.

From 1818 to 1967 the studio remained in the hands of four generations of Tadolini sculptors, who handed the craft down from father to son. The rooms preserve the memory of two centuries of Italian sculpture: preparatory models for works now scattered around the world, marble and bronze sculptures, anatomical studies and the tools of the trade, left in the studio’s original disorder.

The conservation restoration kept the colours, the materials and the seemingly random arrangement of the works. The collection does not follow any cataloguing criterion: it places works by Canova and Adamo alongside works in a Romantic taste by Scipione and Giulio Tadolini and the more intimate ones by Enrico, ranging from neoclassical elegance to the bourgeois dimension of the 20th century. Today the spaces, arranged in rooms dedicated to the family’s sculptors, house a café and a restaurant.

Highlights

Studio of Antonio Canova and the Tadolini family from 1818 to 1967
Preparatory models and plasters by Canova and Adamo Tadolini
Sculptures by Scipione, Giulio and Enrico Tadolini
Rooms named after the family’s sculptors
Original atmosphere of the studio preserved by the restoration

Permanent exhibition

Collezione dell'atelier Canova Tadolini – Plasters, preparatory models and marble and bronze sculptures by Canova and four generations of Tadolini sculptors, displayed in the rooms of the former studio.