Antonio Canova’s Bust of Helen: ‘Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships?’
This marble bust of Helen of Troy is ‘a collector’s dream’, says our International Head of Sculpture, Donald Johnston. Made by the greatest sculptor of his era and boasting an unbroken provenance, it goes under the hammer in London on 6 July 2023
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At the palazzo of Contessa Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi, one of Europe’s most famous society hostesses, Byron met the greatest Italian artists and writers of the day, among them the Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova. Here, surrounded by the charm and sparkle of literary and artistic genius, the British poet discovered a beautiful marble head of Helen of Troy carved by Canova, for Albrizzi, in around 1811.
Gazing upon its intricate detailing and impossibly smooth white surface, designed to maximise the effects of flickering candlelight, Byron was enchanted. He wrote to Murray: ‘The Helen of Canova… is without exception, to my mind, the most perfectly beautiful of human conceptions, and far beyond my ideas of human execution.’
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