Thorwaldsen, Albert Bertel
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
tor'wald-sen, Albert Bertel (1770-1844), a celebrated Danish sculptor. His father was an Icelander who had settled in Copenhagen to carry on the trade of a woodcarver. Young Thorwaldsen learned his father's trade and was placed at an early age in the Copenhagen School of Art. In 1793 he won a gold medal which carried with it a traveling scholarship that paid his expenses abroad for three years. He went to Italy in a Danish man-of-war and studied with Canova, the greatest of modern Italian sculptors. His reputation as a young artist was such that orders soon came to him from all parts of Europe. He remained at Rome twenty-three years. He returned to Denmark in 1819 and again in 1838. He made a fortune by his art, the greater part o which he bequeathed to build and endow a museum in Copenhagen. The models of his various works are nearly all to be found here. The building follows Greek and Etruscan models. It is a low, long, rectangle, of a solemn, impressive style. It contains a series of halls in which there are eighty statues, three long friezes, 220 small reliefs, and 130 busts designed or modeled by the great sculptor. He himself was buried at his own request in a courtyard of the museum under a bed of roses. Thorwaldsen's most widely known work is probably The Lion of Lucerne. Night and Morning are celebrated low reliefs. His greatest work is considered a group of Christ and the Twelve Apostles, executed for a church in Copenhagen. Much of his work is possessed by private owners in England. See Copen-Hagen ; Lucerne ; Sculpture
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 sketch still holds in almost every particular: the Thorvaldsens Museum (the name is now normally spelled with a v) opened in Copenhagen in 1848 and still houses the models, statues, reliefs and busts, with the sculptor buried in its central courtyard. Two details have shifted. Scholars now describe Thorvaldsen as Canova's great rival in Rome rather than his pupil, as Aiton has it; and his birth date of 19 November 1770 rests on his own testimony rather than on a record, so it is treated as uncertain. What Aiton called his greatest work, the Christ for the Church of Our Lady, has meanwhile travelled further than any of the rest: marble copies of the Christus were adopted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a visual emblem, and reproductions now stand at its visitors' centres around the world.
Written for this edition, 2026.