Depicts a detail from a self-portrait of Antonio Canova flanked by the Canovian coat of arms with the heraldic emblem of the Marquisate of Ischia di Castro in Latium. These works of the Italian sculptor and painter are both exhibited on his tomb in the Canovian Temple at Possagno, Treviso. On the left, the arch-shaped inscription “REPUBBLICA ITALIANA”; on the right, the name of the designer “U. PERNAZZA”.

Uliana Pernazza

Depicts a detail from the marble statue Venus Italica by Antonio Canova. On the right, the value “5 EURO” and “R”, identifying the Mint of Rome; on the left, the dates “1822 • 2022”, the date of Canova’s death and that of the coin’s issue respectively; around, the inscription “ANTONIO CANOVA”.

The Venus Italica is a marble sculpture commissioned by Napoléon Bonaparte and fashioned by Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. Canova finished the original work in 1802 and modelled two further variants which he completed in 1819. The work was to serve as a replacement for the Venus de Medici sculpture, a copy of an antique work by Cleomenes of Athens, which had been seized, taken to France and placed in the Louvre in 1802 by orders of Bonaparte. After Napoleon's abdication the Venus de Medici was returned to Italy on 27 December 1815 and is since on display in the Room of Venus in the Galleria Palatina at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.