Copenhagen

T H E SIGHTS OF COPENHAGEN.

not gain complete ascendency until Tho rvaldsen b ro u g h t his w orks before the public. W hen he arrived in Rome, on March 8th, 1797, he was 26 years of age. He had received his p reparatory artistic educa­ tion at the academy of Copenhagen, which was then condu c ­ ted in the spirit of the G rotesque style. But his healthy nature had no b en t tow ard s the stilted and m annered, and his great artistic ability w ould not be confined w ithin any strict limits. In Rome he lived w ith the accomplished Danish archaeologist and art connoisseur, Zoëga, w ho ta ugh t him to see the beauty of the antique works of art, and u rg ed him to study and copy the best am ong them . After some attempts which did not satisfy himself, the y o u n g artist at last p roduced his famous statue, Jason — the victorious y o u n g hero retu rn ing to his galley after fetching the golden fleece from Kolchis. This noble and spi­ rited figure, finished in the sp ring of 1803, aroused universal adm iration; even Canova, the greatest sculptor of the day, saw in Jason “a new and g rand style". Now Thorvaldsen knew that he was on the right path, and he kept to it with surprising accuracy ever after. In a series of statues and bas-reliefs on v arying scales, mostly w ith motives from the G reek and Ro­ man mythologies and hero-legends, he gave shape to his ideals of hum an beauty, influenced by the best Roman a n ­ tiques. Never-failing taste and exquisite artistic instinct were his strong points. The w atchw ord of the time was one that had often been heard before and has been heard since: "G o to n atu re"; bu t to this was added : "and learn from the an ­ tique how to look at it". Thorvaldsen followed this teaching in his own way; he was fortunately too much of the p ro d u c ­ tive genius to be content with an aesthetic im itation of ancient art. And he was determ ined to avoid the exaggeration and affectation which offended him in the art of the more imm e­ diate past, from Michael Angelo to Canova. He aimed at the ancient scu lp tu re’s presentation of pure, absolute beauty, with no d istu rb ing element. But he chose for im itation only what

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