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Bertel Thorvaldsen
(1770 - 1844)
Various works

Biography
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THORVALDSEN or THORWALDSEN, BERTEL (1770-1844), Danish sculptor, the son of an Icelander who had settled in Denmark and there carried on the trade of a wood-carver, was born in Copenhagen on the 8th November 1770.

While very young he learnt to assist his father; at the age of eleven he entered the Copenhagen School of Art, and soon began to show his exceptional talents. In 1792 he won the highest prize, the travelling studentship, and in 1796 he started for Italy in a Danish man-of-war. On the 8th March 1797 he arrived in Rome, where Canova was at the height of his popularity. Thorwaldsen’s first success was the model for a statue of Jason, which was highly praised by Canova, and he received the commission to execute it in marble from Thomas Hope, a wealthy English art-patron. From that time Thorwaldsen’s success was assured, and he did not leave Italy for twenty-three years.

In 1819 he returned to Denmark, where he was commissioned to make the colossal series of statues of Christ and the twelve Apostles which are now in the Fruenkirche in Copenhagen. These were executed after his return to Rome, and were not completed till 1838, when Thorwaldsen again returned to Denmark. He died suddenly in the Copenhagen theatre on the 24th 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 sculpture, a very large collection, exhibited to the greatest possible advantage. Thorwaldsen is buried in the courtyard of this museum, under a bed of roses, by his own special wish.

On the whole Thorwaldsen was the most successful of all the imitators of classical sculpture, and many of his statues of pagan deities are modelled with much of the antique feeling for breadth and purity of design. His attempts at Christian sculpture, such as the tomb of Pius VII in St Peter’s and the Christ and Apostles at Copenhagen, are less successful, and were not in accordance with the sculptor’s real sympathies, which were purely classic. Thorwaldsen worked sometimes with feverish eagerness; at other times he was idle for many months together. A great number of his best works exist in private collections in England.

His not very successful statue of Lord Byron, after being refused a place in Westminster Abbey, was finally deposited in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The most widely popular among Thorwaldsen’s works have been some of his bas-reliefs, such as the Night and the Morning, which he is said to have modelled in one day.

See Eugene Plon, Thorwaldsen, sa vie, &c. (Paris, 1880); Andersen, B. Thorwaldsen (Berlin, 1845); Killerup, Thorwaldsen’s Arbeiten, &c. (Copenhagen, 1852); Thiele, Thorwaldsen’s Leben (Leipzig, 1852-1856); C. A. Rosenberg, Thorwaldsen . . . mit 146 Abbildungen (1896; " Kunstlermonographien," No. 16); S. Trier, Thorvaldsen (1903); A. Wilde, Erindringer om Jerichau og Thorvaldsen (1884).

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911 edition (public domain text)

Jason with the Golden Fleece

Two views
Ganymede



Eight views of Ganymede standing and one of Ganymede with the Eagle of Jupiter
Hebe and Ganymede, and Venus

Left: Hebe and (yet again) Ganymede - Jupiter’s two cup-bearers
Centre and right: two views of Venus
Shepherd Boy with Dog


One black and white and two colour front views, a rear left view, a slightly angled view with reflection, a detail of the reflection re-reversed to show the figure’s back view, and a colour back view.
Note that the version in the mirror picture has a set of panpipes which are not present in the other versions.
This statue inspired my story The Shepherd Boy, which contains nudity and sexual references but no actual sex scenes.

Hylas and the Nymphs

Here we see the youth Hylas, apparently horrified at the prospect of being abducted by lots of beautiful naked women! OK, so he’s Greek, but it surely can’t be that terrible for him... can it?!

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