Portal:Denmark/Selected biography/2007/30



Bertel Thorvaldsen (19 November 1770 - 24 March 1844) was a Danish sculptor.

Thorvaldsen is normally believed to have been born in Copenhagen in 1770 (according to some accounts in 1768), the son of an Icelander who had settled in Denmark, and there carried on the trade of a wood-carver. An alternative Icelandic account argues that he was born in Iceland.

He attended Copenhagen's Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi), winning all the prizes including the large Gold Medal. As a consequence, he was granted a Royal stipend, enabling him to complete his studies in Rome, where he arrived on March 8, 1797.

Thorvaldsen's first success was the model for a statue of Jason, which was highly praised by Antonio Canova, the most popular sculptor in the city. In 1803 he received the commission to execute it in marble from Thomas Hope, a wealthy English art-patron. From that time Thorvaldsen's success was assured, and he did not leave Italy for sixteen years.

In 1819 he visited his native Denmark. Here he was commissioned to make the colossal series of statues of Christ and the twelve Apostles for the rebuilding of Copenhagen's Church of Our Lady, now Copenhagen Cathedral. This work between 1817 and 1829, after its having been destroyed in the British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807. These were executed after his return to Rome, and were not completed till 1838, when Thorvaldsen returned to Denmark.

He died suddenly in the Copenhagen Royal Theatre on 24 March 1844, and bequeathed a great part of his fortune for the building and endowment of a museum in Copenhagen, and also left to fill it all his collection of works of art and the models for all his sculptures very large collection, exhibited to the greatest possible advantage. Thorvaldsen is buried in the courtyard of this museum, under a bed of roses, by his own special wish.

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