ArtSpot: Antonio Canova's "Terpsichore"

This lovely visage belongs to a sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art.  Her name is Terpsichore.

The piece, sculpted by Antonio Canova in 1816, began as a commission by Napoleon Bonaparte's brother, Lucien, as a portrait of his wife, Alexandrine.

Long story short, Lucien left France and didn't pay up, so Canova had to do something with what he had already created.  Rather than the wife of the French Emperor's brother, the young lady would become an idealized beauty with classical features and be rechristened "Terpsichore Lyran," the Muse of Lyric Poetry.  

Acquired by the CMA in 1968, the statue now stands in the rotunda of the Neoclassical 1916 Building on the main level.  (She is pictured below in her former location, Gallery 201, with other works of Western European Art.)  

Canova and I have a rather long history.  At fifteen, I saw his Cupid and Psyche at the Louvre.  Michaelangelo might have understood human musculature better than most artists, but Canova had an intimate feeling for and innate sense of the radiance of human skin.  While the former spoke of releasing his forms from their blocks of marble, one gets the feeling with Canova that the people he sculpted awoke from a long slumber, their once lithe forms changed to graceful, silken stone.

As you walk around the young lady's body, you notice many things.  The carven straps of her sandals.  The curls of her upswept hair.  The gossamer folds of her garment.

Yet, among all of these varied textures, the luminosity of her face, arms, hands, and feet is striking.  You catch yourself staring a little too closely, checking to see if she pulses with some subsurface veins.  The ease of her pose belies the graceful posture built into the work.  It's hard not to be overwhelmed in the presence of such idealized beauty.

In the vast collection of the CMA, Terpsichore is my favorite classical sculpture.  The museum was an afternoon refuge during my undergraduate years in Cleveland.  Free to wander the quiet subterranean galleries of priceless Asian art and well-worn halls of European masterpieces, the CMA was as much a part of my humanities education as any English, philosophy, or history class.

I've shown many dear friends, my boyfriend, a few family members, and sometimes the occasional complete stranger around the renovated rooms at the museum.  In my twenty-nine years, I've seen masterworks that even I have to shake my head at sometimes.  Yet every time I enter the Cleveland Museum of Art, I return to Terpsichore and get that same smile, one that knows I'm - yet again - in the presence of perfection and that the sublime, sometimes, can take form.

- Bill

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You can visit the CMA in person at 11150 East Boulevard Cleveland, OH 44106 or online at http://www.clevelandart.org/

Admission is free, except for special exhibitions.  The museum is closed Mondays and is open everyday until 5 p.m. with 9 p.m. closing times on Wednesdays and Fridays.