The legend goes that the 19th-century Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) made a clay model for a statue of Christ the King, arms outstretched, raised high in gesturing command, his head held high in triumph.
He left the soft and moist clay figure to harden and in the morning when he entered the studio to finish his work, he couldn’t believe what he saw. The weight of the soft clay was too much for the inner structure and instead of a head held high, it had bent downwards, and the arms originally raised in triumph had sagged and fallen low.
Initially Thorvaldsen was deeply disappointed, even disturbed, but when he looked again he saw that the statue with open arms, now expressed something deeper than kingly triumph and victory; it expressed welcome and forgiveness.
Note: The original statue of the “Christus” can be seen at the Vor Frue Kirke (Our Lady’s Church), the National (Lutheran) Cathedral of Denmark.
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Bertel Thorvaldsen was a Danish sculptor renowned as one of the 19th-century’s greatest sculptors on the continent. Born in Copenhagen in 1770, he was heavily influenced by classical Greek and Roman art. His sculptures are celebrated for their elegance and harmony, reflecting the neoclassical style.
His famous work, Christus, an 1833 statue of the resurrected Jesus, is located in the Church of Our Lady, an Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark in Copenhagen. Christus was once considered “the most perfect statue of Christ in the world,” and has been widely reproduced in churches cemeteries, as votive statue, etc., across the world.
The Church of Our Lady was destroyed by fire in September 1807 during the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807. When the church was being rebuilt, Thorvaldsen was commissioned to sculpt statues of Jesus and his 12 apostles. A plaster cast model was supplied for the church’s consecration on 7th June 1829, with the finished white Carrara marble statue replacing it in November 1833.
The marble statue is 11-foot-4-inch tall. The inscription at its base reads ‘Kommer til mig’(Come unto me) with a reference to the Bible verse (Matthew 11:28), in which Jesus is depicted with His hands spread wide. The original plaster cast model is on display in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen.
Image courtesy Wikipedia.