Ares1.0116_Canova

Antonio Canova, "Napoleon Bonaparte as Mars (the Peacemaker)," 1803-1806, Wellington Museum, Apsley House, London.

Canova's assertive creation did not find particular favor with Napoleon, in part because the passage of time between commission and completion saw a drastic change of the subject's political fortunes. (Johns, "Portrait Mythology"; cf. 0131Aphrodite_Canova7

Christopher M.S. Johns, Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe (Berkeley and LA, 1998).

C.M.S. Johns, "Portrait Mythology: Antonio Canova's Representations of the Bonapartes," Eighteenth Century Studies 28 (1994): 115- 29.

Interesting copies:
plaster study at Civico Museo Revoltella, Trieste (1802);
bronze replica Palazzo di Brera, Milano (1809)