Bertel Thorvaldsen
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Bertel Thorvaldsen | |
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Born | Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen 19 November 1770 Copenhagen, Denmark |
Died | 24 March 1844 Copenhagen, Denmark | (aged 73)
Known for | Sculpting |
Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen (Danish:
In
Upon his return to Denmark in 1838, Thorvaldsen was received as a national hero. The Thorvaldsen Museum was erected to house his works next to Christiansborg Palace. Thorvaldsen is buried within the courtyard of the museum. In his time, he was seen as the successor of master sculptor Antonio Canova. Among his more famous public monuments are the statues of Nicolaus Copernicus and Józef Poniatowski in Warsaw; the statue of Maximilian I in Munich; and the tomb monument of Pope Pius VII, the only work by a non-Catholic in St. Peter's Basilica.
Early life and education
Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen in 1770 (according to some accounts, in 1768), the son of Gottskálk Þorvaldsson, an Icelander who had settled in Denmark. His father was a wood-carver at a ship yard, where he made decorative carvings for large ships and was the early source of influence on his son Bertel's development as a sculptor and on his choice of career. Thorvaldsen's mother was Karen Dagnes (her surname sometimes is reported as Grønlund), a Jutlandic peasant girl. His birth certificate and baptismal records have never been found, and the only existing record is of his confirmation in 1787.[3] Thorvaldsen had claimed descent from Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first European born in America.[4]
Thorvaldsen's childhood in Copenhagen was humble. His father had a drinking habit that slowed his career.[5] Nothing is known of Thorvaldsen's early schooling, and he may have been schooled entirely at home. He never became good at writing, and he never acquired much of the knowledge of fine culture that was expected from an artist.[6]
In 1781, by the help of some friends, eleven-year-old Thorvaldsen was admitted to Copenhagen's
At the Academy he was highly praised for his works. In 1793, he won several prizes, from silver to gold, for a
Career
In Rome he lived at the Casa Buti, on the Via Sistina, in front of the Spanish Steps and had his workshop in the stables of the Palazzo Barberini. He was taken under the wing of Georg Zoëga, a Danish archeologist and numismatist living in Rome. Zoëga took an interest in seeing to it that the young Thorvaldsen acquired an appreciation of the antique arts. As a frequent guest at Zoëga's house he met Anna Maria von Uhden, born Magnani. She had worked in Zoëga's house as a maid and had married a German archeologist. She became Thorvaldsen's mistress and left her husband in 1803. In 1813 she gave birth to a daughter, Elisa Thorvaldsen.
Thorvaldsen also studied with another Dane,
The marble Jason was not finished until 25 years later, as Thorvaldsen quickly became a busy man. Also in 1803, he started work on Achilles and Briseïs his first classically themed relief. In 1804 he finished Dance of the Muses at Helicon and a group statue of Cupid and Psyche and other important early works such as Apollo, Bacchus og Ganymedes. During 1805, he had to expand his workshop and enlist the help of several assistants. These assistants undertook most of the marble cutting, and the master limited himself to doing the sketches and finishing touches. Commissioned by Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1808 and finished in 1832 a statue of Adonis is one of the few works in marble carved solely by Thorvaldsen's own hand, and at the same time it is one of the works that is closest to the antique Greek ideals.
In the spring of 1818 Thorvaldsen fell ill, and during his convalescence he was nursed by the
In 1819, he visited his native Denmark. Here he was commissioned to make the colossal series of statues of
Death
Towards the end of 1843 he was prohibited from working for medical reasons, but he began to work again in January 1844. His last composition from 24 March was a sketch for a statue of the genie in chalk on a blackboard. At night he had dinner with his friends
After the meal he went to the
Works
Thorvaldsen was an outstanding representative of the Neoclassical period in sculpture. In fact, his work was often compared to that of Antonio Canova and he became the foremost artist in the field after Canova's death in 1822. The poses and expressions of his figures are much more stiff and formal than those of Canova's. Thorvaldsen embodied the style of classical Greek art more than the Italian artist, he believed that only through the imitation of classical art pieces could one become a truly great artist.
Motifs for his works (reliefs, statues, and busts) were drawn mostly from Greek mythology, as well as works of classic art and literature. He created portraits of important personalities, as in his statue of Pope Pius VII. Thorvaldsen's statue of Pope Pius VII is found in the Clementine Chapel in the Vatican, for which he was the only non-Italian artist to ever have been commissioned to produce a piece. Because he was a Protestant and not a Catholic, the church did not allow him to sign his work. This led to the story of Thorvaldsen sculpting his own face on to the shoulders of the Pope, however any comparison between Thorvaldsen's portrait and the sculpture will show that this is just a fanciful story built on some smaller similarities.[9] His works can be seen in many European countries, especially in the
Thorvaldsen produced some striking and affecting statues of historic figures, including two in
Museums and collections
The
The museum also features Bertel Thorvaldsen's personal collection of paintings, Greek and Roman sculptures, drawings, and prints the artist collected during his lifetime, as well as personal belongings he used in his work and everyday life.
Outside Europe, Thorvaldsen is less well known.
Additional replicas of the Christus include a full-size replica at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland within its iconic dome,[14] and a full-sized copy in bronze at the Ben H. Powell III family plot in Oakwood Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas as a memorial to the Powell's son Rawley.
Thorvaldsen's Christus was recreated in
Thorvaldsen's primary mastery was his feel for the rhythm of lines and movements. Nearly all his sculptures can be viewed from any chosen angle without compromise of their impact. In addition, he had the ability to work in monumental size. Thorvaldsen's classicism was strict; nevertheless his contemporaries saw his art as the ideal, although afterwards art took new directions. A bronze copy of Thorvaldsen's Self-Portrait stands in Central Park, New York, near the East 97 Street entrance.
Gallery: Thorvaldsen's works
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Copenhagen Cathedral. Copies exist throughout the world.
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Christus draft (discolored by sculpting-room fireplace), Thorvaldsen Museum
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Baptismal font,Copenhagen Cathedral
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Jason with the Golden Fleece, Thorvaldsen's first masterpiece
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Ganymede Waters Zeus as an Eagle, Thorvaldsen Museum
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Venus with apple
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Dancing Girl
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Tomb monument toSt. Peter's Basilica, Rome
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Lion by Thorvaldsen.
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Prince Józef Poniatowski Monument, Warsaw
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Sir Walter Scottby Bertel Thorvaldsen
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Possibly Lady Georgiana Bingham, carved c. 1821-1824, National Gallery of Art
Notes
- ^ Forrer, L. (1916). "Thorwaldsen, Albertus". Biographical Dictionary of Medallists. Vol. VI. London: Spink & Son Ltd. pp. 84–86.
- ^ Alexander Sturgis. 2006. Rebels and Martyrs: The Image of the Artist in the Nineteenth Century, London: National Gallery (Great Britain), p. 52
- ^ See the confirmation certificate at the Thorvaldsens Museum Archives
- ^ Paul Henri Mallet, Thomas Percy, I. A. Blackwell, Sir Walter Scott, Northern Antiquities, Harvard University Press
- ^ Just Mathias Thiele, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Mordaunt Roger Barnard. 1865. The Life of Thorvaldsen. Chapman and Hall pp. 3–4
- ^ Just Mathias Thiele, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Mordaunt Roger Barnard. 1865. The Life of Thorvaldsen. Chapman and Hall p.8
- ^ OCLC 14865981.
- ^ Bencard, Ernst Jonas. "On the Cause of Thorvaldsen's Death". Retrieved 7 August 2015.
- ^ Richard P. McBrien: Lives of the Popes[full citation needed]
- ISBN 0-7385-0716-4.
- ^ "Thorvaldsen collections". thorvaldsensmuseum.dk. Archived from the original on 24 June 2014. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
- ^ (but see the important paper by Dimmick below).
- ^ The Church's New Symbol Emphasizes the Centrality of the Savior, 4 April 2020
- Johns Hopkins Medicine: 1, archived from the originalon 3 December 2013
- ^ "Swedish parishioners unveil Jesus Lego statue", NBC News, Associated Press, 12 April 2009, archived from the original on 21 October 2013
Further reading
- Malta 1796–1797: Thorvaldsen's Visit (1996. Malta & Cop.)
- Jørnæs, B. Billedhuggeren Bertel Thorvaldsens liv og værk (1993)
- E. Lerberg, Fire danske Klassikere: Nicolai Abildgaard, Jens Juel, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg og Bertel Thorvaldsen [exhibition catalogue] (1992)
- Kunstlerleben im Rom: Bertel Thorvaldsen, der danische Bildhauer und seine deutschen Freunde, ed. G. Bott [exhibition catalogue] (1991)
- Lauretta Dimmick, 'Mythic Proportion: Bertel Thorvaldsen's Influence in America', in Thorvaldsen: l'ambiente, l'influsso, il mito, ed. P. Kragelund and M. Nykjær (1991) (=Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, Supplementum 18.), pp. 169–191.
- The Age of Neoclassicism [exhibition catalogue] (1972)
- H. Fletcher, 'John Gibson: an English pupil of Thorvaldsen', in Apollo; 96:128 (1972 October), pp. 336–340.
- J. B. Hartmann, 'Canova, Thorvaldsen and Gibson', in English miscellany; 6 (1955), pp. 205–235.
- R. Zeitler, Klassizismus und Utopia: Interpretationen zu Werken von David, Canova, Carstens, Thorvaldsen, Koch (1954)
- Trier, S. Thorvaldsen (1903)
- Rosenberg, C. A. Thorwaldsen ... mit 146 Abbildungen (1896) (= Kunstlermonographie; 16)
- Wilde, A. Erindringer om Jerichau og Thorvaldsen (1884)
- Eugène Plon, Thorwaldsen, sa vie ... (1880)
- R. W. Buchanan, Thorvaldsen and his English critics (1865?)
- Thiele, J. M. Thorwaldsens Leben ... (1852–1856)
- Killerup, Thorwaldsens Arbeiten ... (1852)
- Andersen, B. Thorwaldsen (1845)
- Mordaunt Roger Barnard (trans) The life of Thorvaldsen: Collated from the Danish of Just Matthias Thiele, 1865 (Digitised [1])
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 882.
- Stefano Grandesso, Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), introduzione di Fernando Mazzocca, catalogo delle opere a cura di Laila Skjøthaug 2010, Cinisello Balsamo (MI), Silvana Editoriale, ISBN 978-88-366-1912-2.
- Stefano Grandesso, Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), Introduction by Fernando Mazzocca, Stig Miss; with catalogue by Laila Skjøthaug, Second English and Italian Edition, 2015, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), Silvana Editoriale, ISBN 978-88-366-1912-2.
External links
- Thorvaldsen's Museum, Copenhagen
- Art and the empire city: New York, 1825–1861, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Thorvaldsen (see index)
- The Thorvaldsens Museum Archives, a Documentation Centre on the life, work and context of Bertel Thorvaldsen
- St. Peter's Basilica
- Adonis (links to larger image in new window)
- Adonis (5 views)
- Jason with the Golden Fleece (links to larger image)
- The Three Graces (relief)
- 23 works
- Albert Thorwaldsen 1770 – 1844, L'Illustration Journal Universel, No. 59 Vol III, April 1844 (French)
- Portrait by Samuel Morse, 1831