THORWALDSEN, BERTEL. 



THOU, JACQUES-AUGUSTE DE. 



In 1838 the Christ, the St. John preaching, and the Apostles, the 

 principal works for the cathedral or church of Our Lady at Copen- 

 hagenand other works for the palace of Christiansburg, on which 

 Thorwaldsen had been many years engaged, were completed, and the 

 Danish government sent the frigate Rota to carry them and the 

 sculptor to Copenhagen. Thorwaldsen was received with enthusiasm 

 by his countrymen. He remained among them on this occasion 

 about three years, and chiefly at Nyso, the seat of his friend the 

 Baron Stampe, whero a studio was built for him ; and he finished 

 here some of hi* last works the frieze of tho Procession to Golgotha, 

 for the cathedral ; the Entrance into Jerusalem ; Rebecca at the 

 Well ; his own statue ; and the busts of the poets Ochlenschlager and 

 Holberg. 



In 1841, finding the climate disagree with him, he felt compelled 

 to return to Italy, and he executed at this time his group of the 

 Graces for the King of Wiirtemburg. He returned however to Den- 

 mark and Nyso in the following year, and executed two other works, 

 bas-reliefs, which arc among his last productions Christmas Joy in 

 Heaven ; and the Genius of Poetry, which he presented to his friend 

 Oehlenschlager. He intended to return to Rome in the summer of 

 1844, but h died suddenly in the theatre of Copenhagen, on March 

 24th, in that year, aged seventy-three : he died of disease of the heart. 

 He lay in state in the Academy, and was buried with extraordinary 

 ceremony beneath his own greatest productions in the cathedral 

 church of Copenhagen. 



Thorwaldseu's will bears much resemblance to Sir F. Chantrey's : 

 he bequruthtd all works of art in his possession, including casts of his 

 own works, to the city of Copenhagen, to form a distinct museum, 

 which was to bear his name, on the condition that the city furnished 

 an appropriate building for their reception. This buildiug was nearly 

 completed before the death of Thorwaldsen ; it now forms one of the 

 prime attractions of the city. Besides casts of the numerous works 

 of Thorwaldgen, which would alone constitute an imposing collection 

 of its class, it contains many works of ancient and modern sculpture, 

 numerous paintings by old and recent masters, casts, vases, engraved 

 gems, cameos, terracottas, bronzes, medals, curiosities, engravings, 

 prints of all descriptions, books on the fine arts, and drawings. With 

 the exception of 12,000 dollars to each of his grandchildren, and the 

 life-interest of 40,000 dollars to their mother, Madame Poulseu, his 

 natural daughter, to descend to her children, the whole of his personal 

 estate was directed to be converted into capital, and to be added to 

 the 25,000 dollars already presented for the purpose by Thorwaldsen, 

 to form a museum perpetual fund, for the preservation of the museum 

 and for the purchase of the works of Danish artists, for the encourage- 

 ment of Danish art, and to add to the collections of the museum. 



Thorwaldsen is considered by his admirers the greatest of modern 

 sculptor.- 1 , and many have not hesitated to compare him with the 

 antique. This is however hardly the rank he will hold with posterity ; 

 his style is uniform to monotony, though many individual figures are 

 bold, solid, and of beautiful proportions. His beau-ide"al appears to 

 have been something between the Antinous and the Discobolus of 

 Nancydes, as it is sometimes called ; but as his subjects are seldom 

 heroic, he seldom required more than a moderate expression of heroic 

 vigour or robust strength and activity : in this respect, and in execu- 

 tion generally, he was much surpassed by Canova ; but still more 

 so in the grace of the female form, in which Thorwaldsen certainly did 

 not excel. His females are much too square in the frame, the head 

 and shoulders being generally heavy ; and in no instance do we find in 

 his female figures, in full relief, that beautiful undulation of line and 

 development of form characteristic of the female, which is displayed in 

 the antique, in the works of Canova, and in those of some other 

 modern sculptors ; as, for instance, the Ariadne of Dannecker. Basso- 

 rilievo was a favourite style with Thorwaldsen, and a great proportion 

 of his works are executed in this style. Of this class some of his 

 minor works are the most expressive; but the principal are the 

 Triumph of Alexander, and the Procession to Golgotha, which is 

 the frieze of the cathedral church of Copenhagen, immediately below 

 the numerous group of John preaching in the Wilderness, in foil 

 relief, in the pediment : in the vestibule are the four great Prophets; 

 Christ and the Twelve Apostles are above and around the altar. 

 The Triumph of Alexander, of which there is a copy in marble in 

 the palace of Christiansburg (the first marble copy was made for 

 Count Somariva's villa on the Lake of Como), is a long triumphal 

 procession in two divisions, one meeting the other. In the centre, 

 Alexander, in the chariot of Victory, and followed by his army, is met 

 by the goddess of Peace, followed by Mazajus and Bagophaces with 

 presents for the conqueror. The subject is taken from the work of 

 Quintus Curtius. Much of the frieze is symbolical : perspective is 

 nowhere introduced. The whole arrangement is beautiful, especially 

 that portion which comes from Babylon, comprising the General 

 Mazseus with his family ; female figures strewing flowers ; Bagophanes 

 placing silver altars with burning incense, musicians, and attendants 

 leading horses, sheep, wild animals, and other presents for the con- 

 queror ; next to these are symbolic representations of the river Eu- 

 phrates, and the peaceful occupations of the Babylonians. The human 

 figures of this work are admirable, as is also the management of the 

 costumes, but the horses are below mediocrity both in design aud 

 modelling, especially that of Alexander himself, Bucephalus, which is 



led following the chariot of Alexander; it is a complete distortion. 

 None of the horses of Thorwaldsen are successful. The colossal 

 animal of the Poniatowski monument at Warsaw, and that (of smaller 

 proportions) of the monument to Maximilian of Bavaria at Munich, aro 

 heavy and graceless, and wanting in the finer characteristics of form 

 which belong to the horse. 



Many years ago some admirers of Lord Byron raised a subscription 

 for a monument to the poet, to be placed in Westminster Abbey. 

 Chantrey was requested te execute it, but on account of the smallness 

 of the sum subscribed, he declined, and Thorwaldsen was then applied 

 to, and cheerfully undertook the work. In about 1833 the finished 

 statue arrived at the custom-house in London, but, to the astonishment 

 of the subscribers, the Dean of Westminster, Dr. Ireland, declined to 

 give permission to have it set up in the Abbey, and owing to this 

 difficulty, which proved insurmountable, for Dr. Ireland's successor 

 was of the same opinion, it remained for upwards of twelve years 

 in the custom-house ; when (1846) it was removed to the library of 

 Trinity College, Cambridge. The poet is represented of the size of 

 life, seated on a ruin, with his left foot resting on the fragment of a 

 column ; in his right hand he holds a style up to his mouth ; in his 

 left is a book, inscribed ' Childe Harold :' he is dressed in a frock-coat 

 and cloak. Beside him on the left is a skull, above which is tho 

 Athenian owL The execution is not of the highest order; both 

 face and hands are squarely modelled; thus fineness of expression is 

 precluded through want of elaboration. The likeness is of course 

 posthumous. Some of the finest of Thorwaldsen's imaginative works 

 are in private collections in this country. At the Crystal palace, 

 Sydenham, are casts of several of his most celebrated statues and bassi- 

 rilievi, including his famous ' Triumph of Alexander.' 



THOU, JACQUES-AUGUSTE DE (or, as he called himself in Latin, 

 Jacobus Augustus Thuanus), was born at Paris, on the 8th of October 

 1553 : be was the third son of Christophe de Thou, first president of 

 the parlement de Paris, and of his wife Jacqueline Tuellen de Celi. 

 Besides their three sons aud four daughters, who grew to be men and 

 women, De Thou's parents lost six children in infancy ; and he him- 

 self was so weak and sickly a child till he reached his fifth year, that 

 he was not expected to live. In the exemption which this state 

 of health procured him in his childhood and early boyhood from 

 severer taskwork, he amused himself in cultivating a turn for drawing, 

 which was hereditary in his family ; and in this way, he tells us 

 himself, he learned to write before he had learned to read. Although 

 originally intended for the church, he went in his early studies the 

 whole round of literature and science as then taught ; and while yet 

 only in his eighteenth year he had conceived from the perusal of 

 some of his writings so great an admiration of the celebrated jurist 

 Cujacius, that he proceeded to Valence in Dauphinc, and attended his 

 lectures on Papiniau. Here he met with Joseph Scaliger, with whom 

 he contracted an intimate friendship, which was kept up for the 

 thirty-eight remaining years that Scaliger lived. 



In 1572, after he had been a year at Valence, he was recalled home 

 by his father ; and he arrived in Paris in time to be present at the 

 marriage of Henry, the young king of Navarre, and to witness tho 

 horrors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew which followed. He 

 relates that he saw the dead body of Coligny hanging from the gibbet 

 of Montmartre. The next year he embraced an opportunity of visiting 

 Italy, in the suite of Paul de Foix, who was sent by Charles IX. on a 

 mission to certain of the Italian courts; and he remained in that 

 country till the death of Charles, in May, 1574, and the accession of 

 Henry III., the news of which reached them at Rome, recalled De 

 Foix home. In 1576 he made a journey to Flanders and Holland. 

 In 1578 he succeeded Jean de la Garde, Sieur de Saigne, as one of the 

 ecclesiastical counsellors of the parlement de Paris an entrance into 

 public life which, he says, he made with reluctance, as withdrawing 

 him in part from the society of his books and the cultivation of 

 literature, in which he would have been much better pleased to spend 

 his days. The next year he lost his eldest brother ; and from this 

 time it began to be proposed that, for the better chance of continuing 

 the family, his original destination should be changed, and that he 

 should quit his ecclesiastical for a civil career. Some years elapsed 

 however before this scheme was finally determined upon. Meanwhile 

 he continued to pursue his usual studies; and he states that he had 

 already conceived the project of his great historical work, and began 

 industriously to collect materials for it wherever he went. 



It was in the year 1582, while on a visit to Bordeaux, that he made 

 the acquaintance of Montaigne, whose character as well as genius he 

 has warmly eulogised. The same year his father died : and having 

 also by this time lost his second brother, he, in 1584, resigned his 

 rank as an ecclesiastical counsellor, and on the 10th of April was 

 appointed by the king to the office of master of requests, which then 

 was wont to be held indifferently by ecclesiastics or laymen. Two 

 years after he obtained the reversion of the place held by his uncle, of 

 one of the presidents au mortier in the parlement de Paris ; and in 

 1587 he married Marie, daughter of Franyois Barbanson, Sieur de 

 CanL When, in the next year, in the increasing distractions of the 

 state, Henry III. found himself obliged to leave Paris, De Thou, who, 

 as well as his father and his brothers, adhered steadily throughout 

 the troubles of the time to the royal party, accompanied his majesty 

 o Normandy, and afterwards to Picardy. At Chartres, in August 1588, 



