An equally fine example of Canova at his best is the famous statue of “Pauline Borghese,” a work of later date than the “Cupid and Psyche.” The light-hearted sister of Napoleon is represented as Venus, despite the fact that she was the wife of Prince Borghese, the ruler of Piedmont. The story runs that a friend remonstrated with her and ended with the question whether Pauline had not found the ordeal “a trying one.” “Trying, not at all,” replied the Princess, “there was a stove.” The anecdote serves to illustrate the difference between Canova and his Greek predecessors. Comparing the story of Pauline Borghese with that of the Hetaera Phryne, the difference between the spirit animating Hellenic art and that animating the imitation Greek art of two thousand years later is unmistakable. Praxiteles’ statue of Phryne was the incarnation of womanhood as he felt it. Pauline Borghese merely suggested to Canova a number of graceful lines and masses, which his sense of form enabled him to combine in a pleasing fashion. He willingly preserved a sufficient likeness to compliment the fair model, who had risked a physical and spiritual chill in the cause of art. But the difference between the lasting value of Canova’s “Venus” and that of Praxiteles’ “Aphrodite of Cnidus” can be estimated exactly. It is that which separates the idea of womanhood from the idea of the princely light-o’-love—Pauline Borghese. Canova’s work has not a suggestion of that contact with the eternal verities which is the very essence of a great Greek statue. No one can doubt that both the “Cupid and Psyche” and the “Pauline Borghese” are the works of a man who feels the full beauty of pure line. If formal grace were the best that sculpture could give us, there would be no more to be said. But the achievements of the Greek masters prove that this is not the case. A work of sculpture can convey a sense of palpitating life, of vigorous emotion, which is worth far more than the graceful beauty with which Canova has endowed his conception of Cupid and Psyche, and the Goddess of Desire. It cannot be said that Canova lacked any opportunity vouchsafed to the earlier sculptors. Before he died, his reputation rivalled that of the great artists of the Renaissance. In 1802 he was appointed curator of the Vatican art treasures, a post resembling that held by Raphael and Michael Angelo. Like Bernini, he was called to France. Instead of a bust of Louis XIV., Canova’s task was to model a colossal statue of Napoleon. If Canova had had it in him, he might have been a Michael Angelo. As it was, he lived and died Antonio Canova.