Bertel Thorvaldsen

Bertel Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen on 19 November 1770, the son of a wood-carver from Iceland. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and in 1796 won a stipend that took him to Rome, where he spent most of the next forty years. In Rome he became one of the leading neoclassical sculptors of his age, carving calm marble figures of gods, heroes, and Christian subjects for patrons across Europe. Among his works is the design for the Lion of Lucerne, a memorial to the Swiss Guards killed in Paris in 1792, which the stonemason Lukas Ahorn carved into the living rock and which was dedicated in 1821. Thorvaldsen returned to Copenhagen in 1838 as a national figure. He died there on 24 March 1844. His tomb and a large collection of his works are in Thorvaldsens Museum, built beside the palaces of Copenhagen for that purpose.