A Domestic Scene in Denmark.
The women are good-looking, and in this matter there are national peculiarities worth noticing. At a fair or public entertainment, where men and women of the working classes are brought together in great numbers, the women of Denmark will be pronounced above the average for good looks, and, perhaps, the same thing would not be said of the men.
Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, and the capital of Copenhagen is Thorvaldsen’s Museum. Copenhagen has other and many attractions, but this museum is the crown and glory of Denmark. Art has her victories, and those of war are not so enduring in their glory as the fruits of genius and peace. Here in this ancient and beautiful city, in 1770,—a hundred years, save one, ago,—was born Albert Thorvaldsen, the son of an Iceland ship-carpenter. Poor, obscure, and friendless, but inspired with the genius of his future art, the boy made his own way to Rome. He found employment in the studio of Canova, and his talents soon commanded respect. But he lacked the aid of a patron and friend, and he was about to abandon Italy in despair, when an English banker, by the auspicious name of Hope, appreciated the artist, ordered a marble statue of Jason, which was standing in the clay, and from that glad hour his career was onward and brilliant, till he attained wealth and fame unsurpassed by any sculptor of ancient or modern times. He loved his native Scandinavian climes, and often visited the city of his birth, which he enriched with the noblest creations of his marvellous hand. But he dwelt in Rome, unmarried, save to his art; and when he returned, at the age of sixty-eight, to Copenhagen, he was received as a conqueror, was domiciled in the palace, and, six years afterwards, died in the midst of the lamentations of the people, who loved him and whom he loved.
Façade of the Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen.
As he made the people the heir of his glorious works—in large part the models of the statuary he had executed for kings and nations and wealthy individuals—it was resolved to erect a monument to his name, which should be at once a museum of his creations and a mausoleum for his remains. In the midst of the city, and on an open square, a building—a vast parallelogram with a court-yard in the centre of it—has been reared; the successive stories filled with the productions of the genius of this one man, including the minutest specimens, up to the model of his “Christ,” the highest achievement of his, not to say of human, art. In the midst of the little court-yard, surrounded on its four sides by the walls of this museum, so that every window on the inner side looks down into the court, there lie in solemn and sublime repose the ashes and bones of the man who made all these things! It is silent; but oh! how eloquent the lesson of the greatness and the vanity of genius! It is something, it is a grand thing, to have made all these marbles for the joy and instruction of mankind; and it is sweet to die with the consciousness of leaving for after generations the works that shall teach them lessons of virtue and strength and beauty. But to die and leave them all! To lie and moulder in the midst of them! To be rotting while even the clay that one’s fingers moulded into life-like shapes is admired—this makes the cup of life an insipid draught, and the wise man cries it is vanity, all vanity, after all. Yet not so vain after all! No man liveth unto himself; and one would gladly take the pay that a good, great man gets, who adds to the material wealth of the world the glorious creations of art for all time to come, and then dies in the midst of them. It is more also to be useful than to be great; and he who lives to make others happy, though not an artist in stone or oil, lives to a noble purpose, and his mausoleum is in the hearts made glad by his kindness while he lived.
On the outside of this museum the walls are covered with fresco paintings illustrating the mechanical processes by which the statuary was brought to its place. This is the antique Grecian, and even Egyptian, idea of celebrating an historical event. It might be called Thorvaldsen’s triumph. Within the frieze of the grand hall is the triumph of Alexander the Great. The Hall of Christ contains the casts of the Saviour and all his disciples—that wondrous group which in marble illuminates the chief church in Copenhagen. And as we ascend from floor to floor, and pass through successive chambers—all of them filled with the handiwork of the same great artist who sleeps in sight of every window—one is filled with admiring awe, while charmed with the beauty of the design and execution. Beauty is not the word, though much here is very beautiful. Thorvaldsen was one of the first to appreciate and encourage our own sculptor Powers, whose works are more beautiful than the Dane’s. Strength, majesty, power—these are the attributes that cover as with a garment the face, the head, the limbs of the heroes whom Thorvaldsen by his magic chisel turned into stone. The divine is revealed in his conception of the Redeemer of men. The god-like is in Moses and Peter and John the Baptist; and his ancient heroes are inspired with a sentiment that is easily drawn from the mythology of Scandinavia, in which the worship of Thor and Odin seems to be incorporated ineffaceably.
Portrait of Thorvaldsen. (By Horace Vernet.)