ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and his museum as its point of departure. Thorvaldsen is by far the most famous artist of the so-called Golden Age in the history of Danish art, which covers more or less the first half of the nineteenth century. Inside, the museum contains the artist’s sculptural works, drawings and sketches for sculptures and reliefs as well as his collections of contemporary paintings and his collections of objects from Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquity. The Thorvaldsens Museum once had its own studio to produce copies of statues, busts and reliefs; at other times, the museum had contracts with professional workshops which managed commissions. Thorvaldsen was a sculptor in the neoclassical style; that is, he considered marble his most prized material. The copies were sold to cast collections and were used as models for new marble and bronze versions commissioned by churches, municipal governments.
