Thorwaldsen was wont to call the day of his arrival in the Eternal City the day of his birth, for there his imagination fully awoke; his soul then threw off the fetters of a natural indolence, and in the presence of the antique he conceived the possibilities of the career that lay before him. Struggling with pecuniary difficulties for six years without encouragement, his money gone, the young artist was about to return home in despair, when Mr. Hope, the English banker and author, came into his studio and gave him a commission for a statue of Jason. This was the turning-point in his life; from this time Thorwaldsen had more commissions than he could fill, and honors were showered on him from societies and courts. Although a Protestant, he was elected to succeed Canova as president of the Society of Saint Luke. He was made Knight of the Danebrog by the king of Denmark, and when he visited his native land, in 1819, the journey was a continued ovation. In 1830 he went to Munich to arrange about the monument of the duke of Leuchtenburg, and in IS3S he returned to Copenhagen, but he revisited Rome in 184r. On returning to Copenhagen he was assigned apartments in the royal palace of Christians borg, and found the museum completed which the people by popular sub seription had caused to be constructed for the preservation of his works. llis tomb was to be in the central court, and he visited it the day after his return. Three years later lie was laid there, surrounded by the master pieces which conferred immortality on his name. Preserved under glass in the museum, and showing the imprint of his hands, can still be seen the bust and clay on which he worked the last day of his life.
The art-life of Thorwaldsen was very prolific; the collection at Copen hagen reveals only a portion of the results of his labors. Almost every important city of Italy and Germany is enriched by some fine example of his genius. Opinions may differ as to the originality of the art of Thor waldsen, but there can be but one opinion as to the rank of this the most important sculptor Europe has seen since the death of .Iichelangelo. He has been called a posthumous Greek because of his profound sympathy with classic art and the spirit which created it, but there was nothing servile in Thorwaldsen's appreciation of the antique. He did not imitate, like so many other modern worshippers of Greek art; he was too ignorant to perceive the conditions that produced it, and he had too much original force to borrow. Wherein Thorwaldsen resembled the Greek sculptors —as did also the great masters of the Renaissance—was in being one with them in understanding and practising the principles which underlie all sculpture of a high order: beauty, simplicity of design and execution, and repose. Thus, like the Greeks, he could render his works pleasing and m.tjestic, imbued with that mysterious quality by which high art gains rather than loses by time and appeals not to one man or one race, but to all men of all ages.
There was great variety in Thorwaldsen's subjects—light, airy, fanciful, or grand and full of lofty dignity, simple or constituting elaborate groups. He made above thirty important sepulchral monuments and a great num ber of friezes and bas-reliefs, besides lesser works. One of his most cele brated works is the colossal Lion of Lucerne, modern in subject and clas sical in character, and another is the series of sixteen bas-reliefs represent ing the History qf Cupid and Psyche. One of his greatest monumental
creations is the tomb of Pins V1I.; the statue of Christ is a noble com position, and the series representing the apostles is also admirable. Thorwaldsen's Three Graces is likewise one of the most elegant groups of statuary executed in modern times. Every one is familiar with the exquisite medallion rilievos called _Vigil/ and JAwing. But many will consider the masterpiece of this great sculptor to be the admirable frieze originally intended for the Quirinal on the occasion of the expected visit of Napoleon to Rome, but which was subsequently executed for the Villa Somariva, on the Lake of Como, and represents the Entry of Alexander into Pabylon(p. 40, jig. 1). The hero in his triumphal chariot is followed by his army; a Victory greets him, and the family of Darius and the homage-offering races of Asia conic forward to meet him. In this elab orate conception Thorwaldsen was able to represent with equal merit the various qualities of his genius, although the general arrangement is more strictly imitative of Greek styles than many of his equally pleasing if less ambitious works.
The Adonis (pl. 40, fig. 2) in the Glvptothek at Munich exemplifies Thorwaldsen's tendency toward the ancient art-world of gods and heroes, which offered sculpture such appropriate subjects. Leaning on his spear and lost in dreams of love, Adonis awaits Venus. Tender youthfulness and athletic vigor are intimately blended with a gentle trait of sadness and a presentiment of death which seem suitable to the early-dying genius of Spring.
Jens Adolph Jetichau, a pupil of Thorwaldsen, merits a few words of approval in this connection. He was born at Copenhagen in 1816 and died in 1883. Like his master, the chief characteristics of his style are simplicity and classical purity of design. His chief works were Penelope, A Hunter devoured by a Lioness, The Creation of Eve, and Adam and Eve after the Fall.
Augustus Kiss, a German sculptor of considerable note whose style was wholly modern in spirit, was born at Pless in 1802 and died in 1865. Kiss was a pupil of Rauch, and first attracted attention by his famous group of An Amason struggling with a Panther, exhibited in 1839. It aroused so much enthusiasm that public subscriptions were taken even in the churches in order to have it cast in bronze. In 1851 a plaster cast of this work was awarded the first prize at the London Exhibition. Another powerful and justly celebrated composition in a similar vein is the group called St. Michael and the Dragon.. A number of spirited portrait-statnes, including that of Frederick William III., added to the fame of au artist who exhibited more daring than most sculptors of the period in the matter of originality and of spirited action. Indeed, some object that there is in his works an absence of that repose which is so essential a feature of good sculpture. To this we reply that genius is a law unto itself, and Kiss seems to have had a spark of the divine fire which was lacking in some of his more classical, but less original, contemporaries.