Romantisk og klassisk i Bertel Thorvaldsens Kunst

Abstract

Summary The author tries to show that the almost generally accepted conception of Bertel Thorvaldsen as a pure and strict proclaimer of Winckelmann's doctrines must undergo a critical revision. Thorvaldsen's art belongs to the romantic period and some of its ideas are expressed by him. The Danish sculptor represents quite another classicism than the rationalist and archaeological movement in the late XVIII. century. In his youth he took part in the preromantic “Nordic renaissance” (fig. 1). He was influenced by the revolutionary “Sturmer und Dranger” Carstens and a romantic spirit animates his antique figures. But he also took interest in mediaeval art and poetry, and to a certain degree he had the gusto of the primitive. Thus he was able to reproduce the fantastic scene from The Divine Comedy, where Dante and Virgilius descend into the Inferno on the vermin Geryon (fig. 4); he modelled the statue “Hope”, returning to archaic style, and he studied Egyptian sculpture. During a period of his life he had cert...