"Thorvaldsens Museum
Thorvaldsens Museum is situated in the centre of Copenhagen. The museum building is very characteristic with its strong colours, the unusual façade with its large gates and sloping lines around all gates and windows.
On the roof the goddess of victory, Victoria, drives her four-in-hand and expresses the fame, which Thorvaldsen achieved in both his time and today. Inside the Museum the colours are equally strong both on the lavishly decorated ceilings, in the patterns of the floors and in the colours of the walls. And the light is fantastic in the Museum when it falls through the windows set high up and gives shape and shadow to the sculptures and reliefs.
The first museum building in Denmark
Thorvaldsens Museum was built from 1839 to 1848 and is Denmark’s oldest museum building. The Museum opened on September 18, 1848. Thorvaldsen lived and worked in Rome from 1797 to 1838 and became a famous European artist. Back home in Denmark the wish grew for a museum to be built for him. Here the original models in plaster for his sculptures were to be exhibited, and here Thorvaldsen’s collections of contemporary art and of objects from Egyptian, Greek and Roman Antiquity were to be displayed. Thorvaldsen donated everything he owned to Copenhagen and with contributions from King Frederik VI, King Christian VIII, and also from the Copenhagen local government the Museum was built.
About the museum and the architect M.G. Bindesbøll
Thorvaldsens Museum was built on the site next to Christiansborg Palace, occupied by a building housing the royal coaches and wagons. Parts of the old building are still inside the walls of the Museum. The Museum’s architect was the young Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll (1800 – 1856), who had stayed in Rome in the 1830s and was familiar with Thorvaldsen and his sculptures. Bindesbøll drew several fantastic projects for the Museum while in Rome, but in the end the result was instead a complete conversion of the existing wagon building. The Christ hall and the entrance hall were, however, newly erected." SOURCE
"Bertel Thorvaldsen lived from 1770 to 1844 and Thorvaldsens Museum is Denmark’s oldest and also most extraordinary museum building.
The Museum opened on September 18, 1848. It houses nearly all of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen’s original models for the sculptures he created for numerous European countries.
His drawings and sketches for sculptures and reliefs are also part of the collections in the Museum, along with his extensive collection of paintings from his time and art works and objects from Greek, Roman and Egyptian Antiquity.
With its strong colours both on the outside and inside and a very original architecture the museum building right in the middle of Copenhagen is a fantastic setting for Thorvaldsen’s works and collections." SOURCE
"Long-winded plans for a new museum building in the Greek style of Thorvaldsen's works was replaced by a very original conversion of the winged royal coach yard at Christiansborg Palace. The main facade has five major portals in the Egyptian style, the other side is decorated with a frieze of Jørgen Sonne depicting Thorvaldsen's return to Copenhagen in 1838. The building is crowned by a bronze figure of HV Bissen.
The museum's vaulted room where the sculptures get light from high windows, was decorated for antique, especially Pompeian models under the leadership of Bindesbøll." SOURCE
"Thorvaldsen
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) is one of Denmark’s best known artists. For more than 40 years he lived in Rome where he became one of the most important European representatives of Neo-Classicist sculptural art.
Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen on November 19th, 1770, to poor parents. His father was a carver and immigrant from Iceland. His mother was the daughter of a parish clerk at the village of Lemvig. The young Bertel entered the Art Academy in Copenhagen at the young age of 11 with an unusually bright talent and was educated here as a sculptor until 1793. In 1796 he got the opportunity of travelling to Rome as the Academy’s scholar for three years to be further educated. But he stayed in Rome, received numerous orders and became one of Europe’s best known artists.
Not before 1838 did he return to Copenhagen. Thorvaldsens Museum was built from 1839 to 1848. Thorvaldsen died on March 23rd, 1844, and thus got so see large parts of the Museum finished.
Thorvaldsen’s career
The sculpture, which laid the foundation of Thorvaldsen’s fame, was Jason with the golden fleece from 1803. Contemporaries saw the sculpture as no less than an image of the ideal future for human kind. We are close to the French Revolution and the thoughts of new times with freedom, equality and brotherhood for all. Art and life were once again to be inspired by Roman and Greek Antiquity, e.g. Classical Antiquity and Classical art. This is why the art of the period is also called Neo-Classicism, and Thorvaldsen was early on and artistically very convincingly able to express this fusion between Classical art and the ideals of his time.
After Jason Thorvaldsen received many orders. Rome was the cultural centre of Europe and attracted art interested people who could afford his works in marble or bronze. Thorvaldsen gradually had many employees and no less than five studios in Rome, and his works were placed all over Europe.
Thorvaldsen’s most famous works
Among his most famous works are the sculptures with motifs from Classical mythology, Venus, Mercury, Ganymede, Hebe, Cupid and Psyche. To this comes a number of monumental sculptures of historical persons, e.g. Pope Pius VII (a grave monument in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome) and the equestrian statue of Jozef Poniatowski (Warsaw). Thorvaldsen also carried out large orders for Denmark; most famous of these are the statues of Christ and the Apostles (in Vor Frue Kirke – Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen)." SOURCE