While what he accomplished at the Galleries demonstrated his close rapport with the great tradition of Venetian painting, the Gipsoteca of Possagno is a tribute to Canova, whose works adorned the spaces of the academy he had attended, as this book confirms.
In 1926 Carlo Scarpa completed his studies at the Fine Arts Academy in Venice, where the first master’s program in Architecture had been launched two years earlier. Naturally his name was not among those of the first seven architects who took the registration examination to qualify for professional practice in 1928. For this reason, about thirty years later, in 1957, while the Gipsoteca Canoviana of Possagno was being completed, Scarpa was sued for unlicensed practice. While his educational background was the cause of one of the saddest episodes of his career, the years spent at the Academy did make a constant mark on his work, which is especially perceptible in his efforts starting in 1940 to renovate the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice and the Gipsoteca in Possagno.