(Viterbo, 1893 – Rome, 1951), painter and sculptor, inherited a natural disposition to art from his father Enrico, also an artist and painter, a member of Viterbo’s enlightened middle class, where he founded the School of Arts and Crafts. This inclination was soon joined by a profound interest in antiquity and the Renaissance, influenced in part by the teachings of Ettore Ferrari, his teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, who is notable precisely for his rethought culture on Donatello, Baroque sculpture, especially Bernini, and classical statuary. He has few but deep ties: to his wife and model for all his female nudes, Serafina Pisciarelli, and to sculptor and close friend Attilio Selva.
The Silvio Canevari Papers, donated to the Foundation in 1994, consist of epistolary and iconographic documentation relating to the Pistoia War Memorial, an imposing sculpture created by the artist in 1925 in Piazza Mazzini. Correspondence, entirely in photocopy, collects a number of council resolutions on the assignment of the task and the location of the monument, along with miscellaneous communications regarding the start of work and the selection of materials. The Photo Library collects 21 photographs of the sculpture, mostly details, while C. Frulli’s study, Il monumento di Silvio Canevari ai Caduti di Pistoia (in “Artista. Art Criticism in Tuscany 1992,” Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 1992), reconstructs the art-historical history of the work.
