Marble masterpieces by the great Italian sculptor Antonio Canova will go on show in Milan on Saturday for a new exhibition showcasing Italian neoclassical works from the collection of the prestigious Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.
Seven of the artist's most famous sculptures will be on display at Palazzo Reale, including The Winged Venus, The Repentant Mary Magdalene, The Genius of Death and The Three Graces, commissioned by Napoleon's first wife Josephine in 1812.
The Russian museum has also loaned works by later neoclassical sculptors who took their inspiration from Canova, regarded as the greatest artist of his period.
''This is a series of quite breathtaking masterpieces,'' said curator Fernando Mazzocca. ''No other collection of statues in the world demonstrates with such quantity, variety and quality how Canova and his followers brought back to Italy the prestige of being the land of sculpture, as it had once been in classical times and under Donatello and Michelangelo''.
Mazzocca said the Russian craze for the cool white Graeco-Roman contours of neoclassical sculpture began when art-loving Tsar Alexander I (1777-1825) paid a visit to Napoleon's first wife in 1814 at her Malmaison chateau in Paris.
The tsar was blown away by the beauty of her Canova statues.
After Josephine died from a chill brought on by walking with Alexander in the cold night air, the tsar bought much of her art collection and shipped it to St Petersburg, where he installed it in the Winter Palace - later to become the Hermitage Museum.
The Russian collection of neoclassical sculpture swelled under Alexander's brother and successor Nicholas I (1796-1855), who travelled to Italy in 1845, visiting Rome, Florence, Venice and Bologna to scout for new acquisitions.
''It was a collection in the real sense, put together personally by the tsar, who loved visiting the artists in their studio and commissioning the works he wanted,'' said Hermitage Director Michail Piotrovskij.
Among the works in the Milan show picked out or ordered by Nicholas are Tuscan sculptor Lorenzo Bertolini's Nymph with a Scorpion, showing a girl grimacing with pain after being stung in the foot, and Carrara-born Pietro Tenerani's rendering of Roman flower goddess Flora.
Sculptures in the Russian collection by foreigners who followed in Canova's artistic footsteps such as the Dane Bertel Thorvaldsen and Englishman John Gibson are also on display.
Organisers have tried to recreate in Palazzo Reale the atmosphere of the Hermitage and the great collections of the epoch.
''The sculptures have been so well arranged it will be difficult and painful to give them back when the exhibition finishes,'' said Milan's culture chief Vittorio Sgarbi.
Canova at the Court of the Tsars runs at the Palazzo Reale in Milan from February 23 to June 2.
