Italian sculptor.Antonio Canova, born in Possagno, in the Republic of Venice on 1 November 1757, was considered the greatest sculpture of his time in Europe.  His father died when he was three and his mother remarried, sending him to live with his paternal grandparents.  His grandfather, Pasino Canova, was an accomplished stonecutter and sculptor and taught Antonio the profession.  His skill caught the attention of wealthy and powerful people who financed his studies in Rome, where he spent most of his adult life.  His work marked a return to classical refinement after the florid excesses of the Baroque and Rococco movements.  In 1816, after successfully retrieving from Paris some of the works of Italian art that had been confiscated by Napolean, he was made President of the Accademia di San Luca, the main artistic institution in Rome and received the title of Marquis of Ischia, with an annual pension of 3000 crowns.  In 1822, while working in the city of his birth, he became ill and was taken to Venice, where he died 18 days before his 65th birthday.  He was buried in the mausoleum 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. (bio by: Dan)