Theseus and the Minotaur (sculpture)

Theseus and the Minotaur is a 1781-1782 white marble sculpture by Antonio Canova, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which bought it in 1962.

[5] So great is its debt to that era of art that its first viewers initially thought it to be a copy of a Greek original and were shocked to learn it was a contemporary work.

[6] The work was widely disseminated via an engraving by Raffaello Sanzio Morghen and helped establish Canova's reputation.

By the time it was completed Zulian had left Rome for Constantinople and he released the work to Canova, who sold it to the Austrian collector Count Moritz von Fries, who took it to Vienna.

It remained there until that house's contents were sold just before its demolition in the 1960s, at which time it was acquired by its present owner for £3000, a third of which was provided by the National Art-Collections Fund.