List of products by brand Bertel Thorvaldsen

Bertel Thorvaldsen was born in 1770 in Copenhagen. He trained at the Royal Academy of fine arts denmark, where he acquired a solid command of drawing and sculpture. Very early on, he turned to the study of antique models, which became the basis of his artistic language. At the end of the eighteenth century, he moved to Rome, then a major centre of neoclassical creation, where he spent most of his career. 

In Rome, Thorvaldsen developed a style based on the direct reference to Greek and Roman antiquity. His sculptures emphasise clear volumes, pure lines and balanced composition. The human figure is idealised, devoid of anecdote, to convey a timeless beauty. This approach gives his works a solemn, monumental dimension. 

His work includes statues, and bas reliefs, and funerary monuments and decorative ensembles for public and private commissions across Europe. Mythological subjects featured prominently, alongside religious figures and portraits. In each of these areas, Thorvaldsen applied the same principles of formal rigour and expressive restraint. 

The surface treatment is deliberately smooth, emphasising the continuity of the forms and the stability of the masses. Gestures are restrained and expressions measured, reflecting a conception of sculpture in which emotion is suggested by general harmony rather than by the expressiveness of detail. This restraint distinguishes his work from the more dramatic tendencies of early Romanticism. 

Thorvaldsen achieved international recognition during his lifetime. He received numerous commissions and exerted a major influence on European sculpture in the early 19th century. His Roman studio became a centre for the production and dissemination of neoclassical aesthetics, attracting artists and patrons alike. 

He returned to Copenhagen in the last years of his life, where he died in 1844. His work remains an essential milestone in neoclassical sculpture. It embodies a vision of art based on the permanence of form, the discipline of drawing and the quest for an ideal inspired by Antiquity.