15.75 Inches High x 8.5 Inches Wide x 6.5 Inches Deep

Reduction of Item #781. Artist Antonio Canova (1757-1822) desired to add more portrait busts to the chapels of the Pantheon in Rome in the early 19th century. He was in charge of the arts in Rome for several years, and he was allowed by his superiors to move forward with the project. He altered the scope of the busts from well-known Roman artists to historically significant Italians in general, which was met with some opposition. Most of the portrait busts were moved to the Capitoline Museums (Musei Capitolini) in 1820 due to political tensions in Rome. Canova, along with sculptors he commissioned, created the series of busts for the temple. The portrait of Christopher Columbus was sculpted by Raimondo Trentanove (1792-1832) in 1817. A couple of decades later, British artist Joseph Gott (1786-1860) who was working in Rome sculpted a copy of Trentanove's Columbus. This bust is in the collection of the New-York Historical Society. Several sources note that the bust is not representative of Columbus but is rather an idealized, imaginary depiction. Copies of the sculpture can be found as public monuments to Columbus in the United States such as those in Yonkers, New York and Des Moines, Iowa.

Artist: Raimondo Trentanove

Museum: Musei Capitolini, Rome, and New-York Historical Society, New York

Time Period: Neoclassical, 1817

Sources:

Bouwers, Eveline G. Public Pantheons in Revolutionary Europe: Comparing Cultures of Remembrance, c. 1790-1840. Springer, 2011, pp. 237. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=LXxaCwAAQBAJ&dq=busts+canova+pantheon+pope&source=gbs_navlinks_s.

"Christopher Columbus (1446-1506)." New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibit/christopher-columbus-1446-1506.

The New-York Historical Society. Quarterly Bulletin, vol. 27, no. 4, October 1943, http://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A24194.

Pasquali, Susanna. "From the Pantheon of Artists to the Pantheon of Illustrious Men: Raphael's Tomb and Its Legacy." Pantheons: Transformations of a Monumental Idea. Edited by Richard Wrigley and Matthew Craske. Routledge, 2017. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=9CUxDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Phillips, Samuel. "The Portrait Gallery of the Crystal Palace." The Palace and Park: Its Natural History, and Its Portrait Gallery. Crystal Palace Library, and Bradbury and Evans, 1854, pp. 1-238. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/palaceparkitsnat00unse.

Van der Krogt, Peter. "Busto di Cristoforo Colombo (Bust of Columbus)." Van der Krogt Websites, http://vanderkrogt.net/statues/object.php?webpage=CO&record=itla001.

Various authors. Narrative and Critical History of America: Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century. Library of Alexandria, 2016, footnote 302. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=jqtBDAAAQBAJ&dq=capitoline+museums+colombo+columbus&source=gbs_navlinks_s.