Annika Skaarup Larsen: Bertel Thorvaldsen and Zeuxis: the Assembling Artist 101
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ANALECTA ROMANA INSTITUTI DANICI XLII ANALECTA ROMANA INSTITUTI DANICI XLII 2017 ROMAE MMXVII ANALECTA ROMANA INSTITUTI DANICI XLII © 2017 Accademia di Danimarca ISSN 2035-2506 Published with the support of a grant from: Det Frie Forskningsråd / Kultur og Kommunikation SCIENTIFIC BOARD Karoline Prien Kjeldsen (Bestyrelsesformand, Det Danske Institut i Rom) Jens Bertelsen (Bertelsen & Scheving Arkitekter) Maria Fabricius Hansen (Københavns Universitet) Peter Fibiger Bang (Københavns Universitet) Thomas Harder (Forfatter/writer/scrittore) Michael Herslund (Copenhagen Business School) Hanne Jansen (Københavns Universitet) Kurt Villads Jensen (Syddansk Universitet) Erik Vilstrup Lorenzen (Den Danske Ambassade i Rom) Mogens Nykjær (Aarhus Universitet) Vinnie Nørskov (Aarhus Universitet) Niels Rosing-Schow (Det Kgl. Danske Musikkonservatorium) Lene Schøsler (Københavns Universitet) EDITORIAL BOARD Marianne Pade (Chair of Editorial Board, Det Danske Institut i Rom) Patrick Kragelund (Danmarks Kunstbibliotek) Sine Grove Saxkjær (Det Danske Institut i Rom) Gert Sørensen (Københavns Universitet) Anna Wegener (Det Danske Institut i Rom) Maria Adelaide Zocchi (Det Danske Institut i Rom) Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. — Vol. I (1960) — . Copenhagen: Munksgaard. From 1985: Rome, «L’ERMA» di Bretschneider. From 2007 (online): Accademia di Danimarca ANALECTA ROMANA INSTITUTI DANICI encourages scholarly contributions within the Academy’s research fields. All contributions will be peer reviewed. Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be sent to: [email protected] Authors are requested to consult the journal’s guidelines at www.acdan.it Contents SINE GROVE SAXKJÆR: The Emergence and Marking of Ethnic Identities: Case Studies from the Sibaritide Region 7 ALESSIA DI SANTI: From Egypt to Copenhagen. The Provenance of the Portraits of Augustus, Livia, and Tiberius at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek 33 LARS BOJE MORTENSEN: The Canons of the Medieval Literature from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century 47 SØREN KASPERSEN: Body Language and Theology in the Sistine Ceiling. A Reconsideration of the Augustinian Thesis 65 NICHOLAS STANLEY-PRICE: The Myth of Catholic Prejudice against Protestant Funerals in Eighteenth- Century Rome 89 ANNIKA SKAARUP LARSEN: Bertel Thorvaldsen and Zeuxis: The Assembling Artist 101 KASPAR THORMOD: Depicting People in Rome: Contemporary Examples of Portaiture in the Work of International Artists 119 Bertel Thorvaldsen and Zeuxis The Assembling Artist by ANNIKA SKAARUP LARSEN Abstract. This paper seeks to offer an insight into the drawing practices of Bertel Thorvaldsen by drawing an analogy between the sculptor and the mythic working process of the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis (5th century BC). Zeuxis, unable to find a suitable model for his painting of the ideal beauty of Helen of Troy, selects from five young women their most perfect feature and combines them to create his own image of universal beauty. The biographer of Thorvaldsen, J. M. Thiele, writes how the artist modelled his Venus on 30 live models, an anecdote that mirrors Zeuxis’ quest to extract perfect beauty from imperfect nature. But Thorvaldsen’s models were not only the men and women he brought to his studio. His drawn sketches testify that for inspiration as well as for specific compositional solutions he looked to the admired art of Antiquity and his own contemporaries. These external origins challenge a present day notion of artistic originality, but for the neoclassical artist the act of copying, or imitating, was closely connected to that of inspiration and invention. By framing Thorvaldsen as a 19th century Zeuxis, his creative process can be viewed in light of an academic tradition that relates the idea of originality, not, as we have come to expect of art today, to the invention of something hitherto unseen, but to a conscious strategy of selection and assemblage. Introduction: Thorvaldsen as Zeuxis for artistic creation and the complex concept In his Natural History (33 AC), Pliny the Elder of mimesis promoted by European classicism. describes the mythic working process of the It lay at the foundation of the teachings of ancient Greek painter Zeuxis (5th century BC) the art academies that arose all over Europe when composing a painting of the beautiful during the 18th century, where natural and Helen of Troy for the temple of Hera Lakinia artistic models alike were copied and imitated at Akragas. Unable to find a suitable model for in search of perfect form. This paper seeks his image of the universal beauty of Helen, to offer an insight into the work of the he selects from five young maidens their most Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770- admirable features and combines them in his 1844) by drawing an analogy between his painting, thus achieving an ideal not found in creative process and that of the ancient Greek nature.1 Pliny also writes of Zeuxis that he painter.3 Using Zeuxis as a model will allow “robbed his masters of their art and carried for a reading of Thorvaldsen, that includes it off with him”2, thereby adding another his extensive use of known visual models, source to the composite ideal, that Zeuxis, while avoiding the temptation of categorizing and since him a long line of artists, strived to Thorvaldsen as merely an uninspired copycat. visualize. This method of creative assemblage Thus, the first section of the paper describes has since the Renaissance stood as a model the teaching at the Copenhagen Academy 1 Plinius 1952, 308-9, § 64. That the image is of Hel- 3 My thanks to Maria Fabricius Hansen from the en of Troy is not mentioned by Pliny, but is speci- University of Copenhagen for her help and guidan- fied by the translator. The different versions of the ce in relation to, first, my thesis, and since this legend are discussed in: Mansfield 2007, 19-38. paper. Also to Ernst Jonas Bencard from Thor- 2 Ibid. 306-7, § 62. valdsens Museum for taking the time to discuss 102 ANNIKA SKAARUP LARSEN of Art, and the validation that the myth of the motifs chosen by both Thorvaldsen Zeuxis offered the academic system, which and his rival, the Italian sculptor Antonio will serve as a basis for a further analysis of Canova.8 In many cases, however, the many Thorvaldsen’s creative process and use of visual models are mentioned in relation to drawn sketches. specific works by Thorvaldsen and treated The primary object of study will be as somewhat isolated occurrences. Only Jan Thorvaldsen’s drawings. Since paper became Zahle relates, in his book on Thorvaldsen’s commercially available in the 15th century, extensive collection of plaster casts, the many drawing has often been theorized in European cases where Thorvaldsen found solutions to art history as a document of artistic creation specific compositional problems in his plaster and as the most direct link between inner copies, to a discussion on Thorvaldsen’s use of idea and outer image. This also shapes the models in a broader perspective.9 It is the aim reading of Thorvaldsen’s drawings. When of this paper to bring together these diverse Julius Lange wrote about this subject in inspirations and discuss in more general terms 1886, he made a clear distinction between the what role the act of copying or imitation sculptor’s finished works in marble, which, played in Thorvaldsen’s creative process. A writes Lange, one might sometimes find to be reality of many visual models might challenge a bit cold, and his drawn sketches, in which a present day notion of artistic originality, one enters into “a confidential conversation but by framing Thorvaldsen as a neoclassical with the artist himself ”, and “finds him at Zeuxis his artistic practices can be viewed the moment of creation.”4 Lange credits this in light of an academic tradition that relates coolness in the finished works to a demand the idea of originality, not, as we have come for “purity of form”, present at the time in to expect of art today, to the invention of both painting and sculpture, which impacted something hitherto unseen, but to a conscious the way Thorvaldsen executed his ideas in strategy of selection and assemblage. marble.5 Such a distinction has continued to shape the way the sculptor’s drawings are Zeuxis and the Art Academies presented.6 This framing of Thorvaldsen’s The myth of Zeuxis is important, according sketches as particularly subjective or personal to professor Elizabeth C. Mansfield, because is challenged by the fact that in many cases it differs from many of the ancient myths Thorvaldsen found his ideas – for subjects as used to explain the rules of classical art. well as specific compositional solutions – in Where creativity is otherwise characterized as the work of other artists, both ancient and a result of emotional or corporeal stimuli, the contemporary. Zeuxian myth favours an intellectual rather The use of known visual models has not than emotional approach to art making.10 A gone unnoticed in the extensive writing on central ambition of the Art Academies that Thorvaldsen. The different antique models first developed in Italy during the 16th century, that Thorvaldsen imitated in his own work and later spread all over Europe, was the have been defined and discussed, not least elevation of the status of art to a respected in relation to the early masterpiece, Jason intellectual activity, as opposed to a mere and the Golden Fleece.7 That Thorvaldsen craft. The ancient myth of Zeuxis helped took inspiration from the drawings of his legitimize this objective. Moreover, according contemporaries, Asmus Jacob Carstens and to Mansfield, Pliny’s account of Zeuxis’ life John Flaxman, is also well described in the highlights a number of the qualities that literature, as is the general overlap between academic training was designed to enhance. Thorvaldsen’s drawings with me, and for sugge- his sculptures. sting that the linear drawing style of John Flaxman 7 An example of this from Thorvaldsen’s own time and Asmus Jacob Carstens not solely be read as an is Brun, discussed below.