Thorvaldsens Museum

Why it is renowned

Bertel Thorvaldsen lived and worked in Rome from 1796 to 1838 and came home to Copenhagen a world-famous artist.¹ The museum holds his original plaster models, the casts behind bronze and marble statues and reliefs now in museums and churches around the world, together with his marbles.²³ It is a museum given to a single artist, in a building by Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll whose coloured rooms draw on Greek, Pompeian and Egyptian models.²¹

The story

A committee set up in December 1836 launched a nationwide collection for a Thorvaldsen museum on 10 January 1837.² Bindesbøll, who had lived in Rome in the 1830s and become a close friend of the sculptor, designed the building; it went up from 1838 to 1848 beside Christiansborg Palace, around an inner courtyard where Thorvaldsen is buried.²¹⁴ Bindesbøll took the colours and patterns from the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the high, slanting light from the windows of Thorvaldsen's studios in Rome.¹ Every room has its own painted ceiling, and a frieze by Jørgen Sonne on the outside shows the sculptor's homecoming in 1838.⁵ Besides the sculpture, the museum shows the paintings, drawings, prints and Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities Thorvaldsen collected.²

What to know it by

• The plaster models²Bertel ThorvaldsenOriginal models for his statues and reliefs
• Cupid and the Graces³Bertel ThorvaldsenMarble group shown in the galleries, museum no. A894
• The museum building²1848Michael Gottlieb BindesbøllColoured rooms around the courtyard with Thorvaldsen's grave
• Sonne's frieze⁵Jørgen SonneThe sculptor's homecoming from Rome in 1838