Una biografia quasi dimenticata: i Memoirs of Antonio Canova di J. S. Memes

Of the different Canova's lives written in Italy and Europe before and after his death, John Smythe Memes's "Memoirs of Antonio Canova" has always been the least considered by scholars, though not really unknown. First foreign biography ever edited as a book, it represents a highly interesting evidence of Canova's fortune and reception in Great Britain, the land of his most numerous and munificent patrons. But the analysis of his contents and particularly of the first two chapters, dedicated to outline a short history of sculpture from Middle-Ages to present times, offers also an occasion to evaluate two other specific topics: the importance of Gibbon's historiographical model for the new born modern art history in Euroep and the reception of Cicognara's "Storia della Scultura" out of Italy.