#canonica

A bust of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia by Italian sculptor Pietro Canonica, seen in his mother's Maple Drawing room at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo.

In 1910, Canonica met Tsar Nicholas II. Having become famous, among other things, as a sculptor of children's portraits, the Italian expected to receive an order for portraits of the imperial children. In February of the same year, he started working on the bust of the Tsarevich (the one seen above).

A bust of Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia, by Pietro Canonica, 1910 (and a series of pictures of the Tsarina posing for Canonica at the Alexander Palace).

While this particular bust is on display at the Pavlovsk Palace, it seems that a copy of clay model that Canonica is seen working on is being kept at the Museo Pietro Canonica in Rome alongside several other sculptures of the Romanovs.

Among the many royal admirers of the revered Italian scultor were the Romanovs, for whom Canonica worked with great passion from 1910 until the Russian Revolution in 1917.

In letters, Canonica would go on to remember with affection and nostalgia the long conversations at the palace with Tsarina Alexandra. During the many hours spent together the two conversed amiably about art and writing, especially Italian. The tsarina, in fact, loved, art and Italian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Fogazzaro and De Amicis.

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