Midnight Sunbeams; or, Bits of Travel Through the Land of the Norseman. Edwin Coolidge Kimball
Walking down an adjacent street whose shop windows were filled with tempting displays of terracotta vases, statues, and reliefs, many of them being copies from Thorvaldsen’s works, we came to a large market place, where old women, wearing big white sunbonnets, with white handkerchiefs folded over their shoulders, sat in the open air behind piles of fruit and vegetables. Many of the market girls wore kid gloves, minus the finger ends; one girl, adorned with what were once delicate evening gloves, was selling cabbages, and from the coquettish manner in which she handled them with her soiled gloves, we judged that she considered herself the belle of the market.
Near by is the Christiansborg Palace, which was partially destroyed by fire in 1884. Most of the walls are still standing, but the interior was completely destroyed. In addition to the royal residence, the long range of buildings surrounding the spacious courts contained the Chambers of Parliament, the Royal Library and Picture Gallery; part of the collection in the last was saved from the flames.
Looking across the great Palace Square we see the tall tower of the Exchange one hundred and fifty feet high, the upper part of which is formed by four dragons, their tails twisted together high in air, until they gradually taper to a point. Tradition says that this curious spire was removed bodily from Kalmar in the south of Sweden.
At one side of the great ruined palace is the Thorvaldsen Museum, the chief attraction of Copenhagen, and the northern Mecca of all art-loving tourists.
Bertel Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen in 1770. His father was a ship carpenter and carver of figure heads, and as a child little Bertel went with him to the ship yards and assisted him in his work, showing so much intelligence, that at the age of eleven he entered the Free School of Art.
Here he made rapid progress in sculpture, but the other branches of his education were so neglected, that at the age of eighteen he could scarcely read and write; his genius for art was born in him, and at the age of twenty-three he gained the grand prize, which carried with it the privilege of study and travel abroad. In after years, when questioned concerning the date of his birth, he always replied: “I don’t know; but I arrived in Rome on the 8th of March 1797,” dating his birth from the commencement of his career as an artist. Years of obscurity and patient labor followed his arrival in Rome; the model of his great work “Jason,” though greatly admired, found no purchaser till in 1803, just as he was about to return to Copenhagen in hopeless disgust, Thomas Hope, a wealthy English banker, ordered its reproduction in marble. From this time forward, fame and prosperity flowed in upon him at full tide. When he returned to Denmark in 1819, his whole journey, in each country through which he travelled, was a series of honors. His reception at Copenhagen was triumphal, and he was lodged as a guest in the Royal Palace. He remained a year, then returned to Rome where he labored assiduously till 1838, when he left, intending to pass the remainder of his days in his native land, but the climate proving too severe he returned, in 1841, to Rome. Having revisited Copenhagen in 1844 he died there suddenly in the theatre. By many he is ranked as the greatest sculptor since Michael Angelo, and is regarded as the most famous Dane of modern times.
The Thorvaldsen Museum was built by the city of Copenhagen, partly from private subscriptions, as a repository for the works of art bequeathed by the great sculptor to his native town; it also contains his Mausoleum, for it was Thorvaldsen’s expressed wish to rest among his works. The building is constructed in the style of the Pompeian and Etruscan tombs enclosing a large open court. Over the pediment of the façade is a bronze goddess of victory in a quadriga; the other three sides of the building are decorated with a series of scenes in plaster, inlaid with different colored cements, representing the arrival and unloading of the ships at Copenhagen in 1838, which had been sent to Rome to bring back the great sculptor, and his works of art, to his native land. The tomb is in the centre of the open court, covered with ivy and surrounded by a low granite frame bearing simply the name, Bertel Thorvaldsen, and the date of his birth and death. The coffin rests in a decorated vault below.
In the corridors surrounding the court, in the lofty vestibule, and in the forty-two rooms on both floors of the building, are displayed one hundred and nine of Thorvaldsen’s works in marble, besides plaster casts of all the works from his hand, several hundred in number, comprising statues, busts, reliefs, and sepulchral and commemorative monuments: for in every city of any importance, from Copenhagen to Rome, there is found some work from the hand of this prolific genius. Several rooms contain a collection of gems, coins, vases, antiquities and paintings, gathered by the sculptor during his residence in Rome, while others contain his sketches, designs, and furniture from his home in Copenhagen.
Among his most famous works are Jason with the Golden Fleece, Hebe, Mercury, and the Shepherd Boy, the model of which was a beautiful Roman boy. There is a most striking statue of Thorvaldsen, executed by himself, representing the sculptor in his studio, with mallet and chisel in his hands, as he pauses for a moment in his work, and leans upon his unfinished statue of Hope.
The lovely reliefs of Day, Night, and the Four Seasons are familiar to all from photographs; the relief called the Ages of Love, where representatives of all ages are eagerly catching the flying cherubs as they are let out of a cage, so delighted the Pope on his visit to the artist’s studio, and so absorbed was he in contemplation, that he forgot to bestow the customary blessing upon the sculptor.
Perhaps the most impressive of all his works are his Christ and the Twelve Apostles, the models of which are here in the Museum in the “Hall of Christ,” and the originals in marble in the Fruekirke (Church of Our Lady) not far away; the colossal statues of the apostles, at the sides of the church, lead up to the sublime figure of the Risen Christ; and all show the capacity of the artist for appreciating and fulfilling the demands of the Christian ideal. In the same church is a kneeling Angel of great beauty, holding a shell which serves as a font, and in two chapels are exquisite reliefs of the Baptism, and Last Supper.
Copenhagen possesses many museums and collections; among them, the Museum of Northern Antiquities contains an invaluable collection representing the Flint, Bronze, Iron, Mediæval and Modern Periods of Scandinavian civilization, but it is of more interest to the scientist and special student than to the ordinary tourist.
The Ethnological Museum is one of the most extensive in Europe; particularly interesting were the figures in costumes representing life among the Esquimaux and North American Indians, the latter gorgeous in feathers and war paint.
The Church of the Trinity has a tower 116 feet high, called the Round Tower, ascended by means of a wide winding roadway, which would readily permit of a horse and carriage being driven to the very top; from the summit you obtain one of the finest views of the city, divided into islands by the canals and arms of the sea which intersect it in many directions. You look down upon a sea of roofs, broken here and there by gardens and small parks, and bounded upon one side by a sea of blue water, upon the other by the green beech forests of Zealand.
The pleasantest promenade in the city is called the Lange Linie, a wide shaded walk extending along the sea on one side of the citadel, at the end of which are several sea-bathing establishments; it is a favorite resort on an afternoon, and one encounters many promenaders, enjoying the bracing sea breezes and the views of the gleaming waters traversed by numerous steamers and sailing craft. The citadel is surrounded by a moat, but the drawbridge is always down and one enters freely, walks about the earth-works and walls, among the cannon and barracks, and explores unmolested to his heart’s content, in great contrast to the fortresses of Germany, where no stranger is allowed to enter without a permit, and at every step is accompanied by a soldier.
The Botanic Gardens are laid out on the site of the ancient fortifications, and furnish an agreeable lounging place, even if one is not interested in flowers and plants. In this section of the city are many wide streets and boulevards, with handsome modern houses built on the Parisian model of flats. The handsome brick Rosenborg Palace near by is especially interesting from its collection of personal mementoes of the Danish monarchs, who fitted up suites of rooms in the style of their various epochs, and collected here their jewels, weapons, coronation robes, state costumes, and curiosities. In the rear of the palace is a pretty park, open to the public, which is a favorite resort of nurses and the rising generation of Danes.