When I went to Venice for the first time 36 years ago and I saw the monument to Antonio Canova in the Basilica dei Frari, I couldn’t have known that so many years later I would be asked to present him to a group of English people who were passionate about everything Italian.

So it is that the little Tonin, born in Possagno, near Treviso, into a family of stonemasons, left fatherless at the age of 4, could not imagine that his talent and his love for classical art would have made him famous and appreciated in all the courts of Europe, that the greatest monarchs and patrons would have asked him to work for them and that various governments would have charged him with tasks and even missions that would seem “impossible”.

However, as the proverb has it, infinite are the ways of the Lord, and so I invite you to discover a really exceptional artist and man, the “Prince of Sculptors” and “The New Phidias”, defender of Italian art, but at the same time a reserved and humble man and a great benefactor who never forgot his origins and his native Possagno.

This meeting will be held in Room 8 of the Leigh Community Centre.