THORVALDSEN, Bertel

This marble relief belongs to a group of four depicting Cupid and Bacchus; Cupid Received by Anacreon; Pan Teaching a Child Satyr to Play Reed Pipe; Bacchante and Child Satyr. All of these subjects are taken from Greek mythology.

Thorvaldsen produced plaster models for the reliefs over the course of twenty-three years from about 1804 onward. The marble versions were executed between 1833 and 1837. The crisp precision of the carving and the skillful variation in surface texture, from the chalky, supple flesh to the smooth, polished objects surrounding the figures, indicate that these marbles were carved by the master himself or specifically under Thorvaldsen’s supervision.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, (1788-1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron’s best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and the short lyric “She Walks in Beauty.” He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.

This marble relief belongs to a group of four depicting Cupid and Bacchus; Cupid Received by Anacreon; Pan Teaching a Child Satyr to Play Reed Pipe; Bacchante and Child Satyr. All of these subjects are taken from Greek mythology.

Thorvaldsen produced plaster models for the reliefs over the course of twenty-three years from about 1804 onward. The marble versions were executed between 1833 and 1837. The crisp precision of the carving and the skillful variation in surface texture, from the chalky, supple flesh to the smooth, polished objects surrounding the figures, indicate that these marbles were carved by the master himself or specifically under Thorvaldsen’s supervision.

This marble relief belongs to a group of four depicting Cupid and Bacchus; Cupid Received by Anacreon; Pan Teaching a Child Satyr to Play Reed Pipe; Bacchante and Child Satyr. All of these subjects are taken from Greek mythology.

Thorvaldsen produced plaster models for the reliefs over the course of twenty-three years from about 1804 onward. The marble versions were executed between 1833 and 1837. The crisp precision of the carving and the skillful variation in surface texture, from the chalky, supple flesh to the smooth, polished objects surrounding the figures, indicate that these marbles were carved by the master himself or specifically under Thorvaldsen’s supervision.

The contour features strongly as a design element in the figure of Ganymede. After various versions in which he presented the standing figures of Ganymede Offering the Drinking Cup (1804) and Ganymede Filling the Cup (1816), the work of 1817 shows him as a kneeling figure watering the eagle. The ancient tale tells how Ganymede, son of King Tros (who gave Troy its name), was the most beautiful of all youths Ganymede is chosen by the gods as Zeus’ cupbearer. Fired with great lust, the father of the gods clothes himself in eagle feathers and hunts out the youth on the Plain of Troy in order to lure him away to Olympus. Ganymede artlessly offers his drinking bowl to this eagle that drops from the sky, and the disguised supreme Olympic god dips his beak into the bowl. As a sign of his origin, the youth wears the Phrygian cap and holds a jug in his right hand.

Wholly designed for a single viewpoint, the sculpture is basically held together by its sever outline. This brings out the relief-like nature of the group and is a mark of Thorvaldsen’s supreme mastery of line, which he had practiced to perfection in numerous bas-reliefs of the time.

Thorvaldsen produced his first model of Hebe in 1806. The daughter of Zeus and Hera, Hebe is the goddess of Youth and Spring, and proffers the cup of immortality at the table of the gods. Thorvaldsen returned to this subject again and again, the figure of Hebe being conceived as a female counterpart to the standing Ganymede.

Hebe stands on her plinth, raising the drinking bowl with her left hand, her gaze focusing on it. She holds the jug with a lowered right hand beside her thigh.

Thorvaldsen produced his first model of Hebe in 1806. The daughter of Zeus and Hera, Hebe is the goddess of Youth and Spring, and proffers the cup of immortality at the table of the gods. Thorvaldsen returned to this subject again and again, the figure of Hebe being conceived as a female counterpart to the standing Ganymede.

Hebe stands on her plinth, raising the drinking bowl with her left hand, her gaze focusing on it. She holds the jug with a lowered right hand beside her thigh.

Hylas in Greek mythology is a handsome youth, the companion and servant of Hercules during the expedition of the Argonauts. After they made landfall one evening he was sent with a pitcher to find fresh water and came upon a spring where Naiads, the nymphs of fountains and streams, were bathing. Captivated by his beauty the nymphs dragged him down into the water, and that was the last anyone saw him.

This figure is considered Thorvaldsen’s breakthrough piece. In October 1800 he had made a first version at life size, which was lost because he had no money to make a plaster cast. In 1802 he began a new, over-life size clay model, which, with outside support, he was able to have cast in plaster. An English art connoisseur, Thomas Hope ordered a marble copy of it.

In the figure of Jason there are unmistakable echoes of Antiquity - principally the Apollo Belvedere but also the Doryphorus of Polyclitus can be considered as models. Following the instructions of Winckelmann, Thorvaldsen developed the representation of his mythological male figures not by imitating nature but by the close study of classical sculptures. A central feature of Neoclassical sculpture is the “contour”, the outline of a sculpture. The clarity of the contour focuses the art on its “spiritual” form.

Thorvaldsen’s severe style, informed by careful study of antiquity, shows to best advantaged in his reliefs. His preeminence in this field won him the sobriquet “patriarch of the relief.”

Nessus Abducting Deianira, the mythological subject of a centaur abducting Hercules’s wife, Deianira, while ferrying her across the river, is one of the artist’s largest compositions. With its erotic and violent undertones, the subject was popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods but infrequently depicted during the soberer era about 1800. The starting point for Thorvaldsen’s composition was an antique Roman marble relief known to the sculptor through a book.

The original plaster model of the relief was made c. 1814. Three marble versions were carved between 1821 and 1826. The plaster model and two marble version are in Denmark (Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen, and private collection).

This marble relief belongs to a group of four depicting Cupid and Bacchus; Cupid Received by Anacreon; Pan Teaching a Child Satyr to Play Reed Pipe; Bacchante and Child Satyr. All of these subjects are taken from Greek mythology.

Thorvaldsen produced plaster models for the reliefs over the course of twenty-three years from about 1804 onward. The marble versions were executed between 1833 and 1837. The crisp precision of the carving and the skillful variation in surface texture, from the chalky, supple flesh to the smooth, polished objects surrounding the figures, indicate that these marbles were carved by the master himself or specifically under Thorvaldsen’s supervision.

The revolutionary movements at the end of the eighteenth century, which were by no means confined to France, adopted a noble Roman pose. Napoleonic Neoclassicism was to take over these canons, nor only in sculpture but in all the arts including architecture, painting, and even furniture and women’s clothes. A classic simplicity became the order of the day. Earlier Greek examples, or Roman copies from them, rather than late Imperial Roman models became the ideal. Once it was really established by the opening of the nineteenth century, the new movement became truly European to a degree that had not been the case since Gothic, with Canova in Italy, Flaxman in England, artists like Thorwaldsen in Denmark and Schadow in Germany all equally representative.

Thorvaldsen’s fame was such that he was often asked to produce commissions for works that seem far removed from his cold Classicism. His statue of the English Romantic poet Byron is an example of this.

Thorvaldsen’s fame was such that he was often asked to produce commissions for works that seem far removed from his cold Classicism. A example of this is the monument of the Swiss guards, commissioned by the city of Lucerne at the instigation of a former officer of the Swiss guards.

The figure of the lion is created on the wall of an earlier lime stone mine, and commemorates allegorically the destruction of the Swiss Guard at the storm of the Tuileries in Paris 1792, depicted in The Dying Lion. The Latin inscription commemorates the military persons, officers and soldiers, who fell in the battle.

Thorvaldsen produced a design for the lion, which was then carved into the rock by a local sculptor, Lukas Ahorn.

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.