Sculptor. He is recognized as one of the most skilled Neoclassical sculptors of his time. He is credited with the start of a revival of the classic antiquities and having the talent of turning Carrara marble to flesh. When he was three, his father died, and after his mother remarried, he was sent to live with his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, Pasino Canova, was an accomplished stonecutter and sculptor and taught him the profession. His talent caught the attention of wealthy and powerful people, who financed his studies in Rome at the early age of eleven. After his Grand Tour of Italy ending in 1780 and later a tour of England and France, he made his home with a studio in Rome, which became a sight for people around the world to visit. In 1816, after successfully retrieving, over a period of years, from Paris some of the works of Italian art that had been confiscated by the invading army of French Emperor Napoleon, he was made President of the Accademia di San Luca, the main artistic institution in Rome. He received the title of Marquis of Ischia, with an annual pension of 3000 crowns. Besides marble, his choice of media was clay, and he had a collection of sketches of design along with a few impressive oil-on-canvas paintings including a self-portrait. The last years of his life, he was commissioned by mainly patrons from English estates and royalty. Some of his best-known pieces are "Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss," three female figures called "Three Graces," the bust "Colossal Head of Napoleon" and two tombs of Roman Catholic Popes. The only piece created for the United States was a full statue of President George Washington donned in a Greek warrior attire, which was commissioned by the State of North Carolina. When the North Carolina capitol building was consumed by fire on June 20, 1831, the priceless statue was demolished. In 1822, while working in the city of his birth, he became ill and was taken to Venice, where he died nineteen days before his 65th birthday. After his request of a burial at the Rome Pantheon was denied, he began to build his own Temple of Canova in Possagno, which included a painting an altarpiece of the Holy Trinity for the main altar. Although his body was entombed in the Temple of Canova in Possagno, his hand was preserved at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Venice, and his heart placed in a tomb that he originally designed to hold the remains of the painter, Titian, in the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, in the Campo dei Frari in Venice. A museum in Possagno, which was constructed by his half-brother in 1836, was opened in the artist's memory, featuring a large collection of working casts that formerly had occupied the studio. His half-brother was buried at the Temple of Canova too. On each side of their marble sarcophagus are busts of the two men, as well as a bronze sphere with the print of Canova's right hand. He was engaged to marry the beautiful daughter of noted engraver Giovanni Volpato, but she broke the engagement to marry another artist; he never married. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a decline in his notoriety but in the 1950s, his fame rallied by art students.