Copenhagen

T H E SIGHTS OF COPENHAGEN.

studios, where at times he em ployed as many as 40 assistants — artists and m arble- hewers. — T hough Rome had becom e T ho rvald sen ’s second home, he was deeply attached to his native country, and when a friend suggested to him that he should bestow on it the almost complete collec­ tion of his works which he himself po s­ sessed (partly plaster models, partly finished works, partly m arble replicas), he eagerly took up the idea and did all he could to realize it. Influential men in Denm ark took the matter in hand, and when, after a residence of 41 years in Rome, T h o r­ valdsen left that city in the autum n of 1838 and settled in C openhagen, everything was so far arranged that the b u ild ing of the m u ­ seum could comm ence the follow ing year.

M oney was scarce in D enm ark at that time, and the m u ­ seum comm ittee had no t m uch at their disposal, so they g ra te­ fully accepted K ing Frederick V i’s offer of an old stable at the castle for adaptation as a museum . The walls of the bu ild ­ ing w ere solid, and the question was how to make as much of it as possible. Bindesboll, the architect, solved the problem ingeniously. He tu rned the old stable into a m onum ental museum . The building, two stories high, forms an extended quadrangle, enclosing a court of the same shape. Round this court, w ith doors op en ing on to it, runs a corridor, which in p art of the back w ing w idens out into the "Christ Hall", the Holiest of Holies of this tem ple of art, which thus opens d i­ rectly on to the court, by a huge door, the only one on this frontage. The Christ Hall and the g reat vestibule which forms the whole front of the bu ild ing run up th rough bo th stories. Seen from the outside the vestibule looks like a separate part of the building. Behind the corridor, in both stories, is a suite

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