“Of course, you see the wounds in His hands and feet. “You don’t see the pain, you don’t see the Crucifixion, you don’t see the blood or the crown of thorns,” Torgard said of Thorvaldsen’s Christus. One version is that a clay model’s arms softened overnight and drooped another is that when Thorvaldsen was struggling to find a specific pose, he was inspired when greeted by a sympathetic visitor.Ī final clay model was finished in 1821, with castings made as the Christus went first from clay to plaster for its initial offering for the Church’s 1829 inauguration. Thorvaldsen spent a couple of years on sketches and clay models for the Christus, with several accounts given on how the statue’s iconic outstretched arms came to be. In 1819, Thorvaldsen returned to Denmark, commissioned to create a collection of statues of Christ and 12 apostles for a renovation of Copenhagen’s Church of Our Lady (Vor Frue Kirke). Regarded for employing the classic Greek style of flowing lines, slender faces and close-in body postures rather than the day’s more expressive and flamboyant styles, Thorvaldsen earned commissions from nobility and royalty across the continent. At age 11, Thorvaldsen was accepted into the Royal Danish Academy of Art, later earning a stipend to study in Rome, where he became a preeminent sculptor during his four decades there.
Where it all beganĭanish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) was born to a peasant mother and a wood-carving father as an older child, he joined his father in the shipyards carving ship decorations. Learn more about the statues in the Rome Italy Temple Visitors’ Center.Īnd now, as the Church is poised to welcome the world to the first temple to be constructed here where ancient apostles walked, the remarkable story of the statues and what they represent is ready to be told. The keys denote the Savior’s message to His lead apostle in Matthew 16:19: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” or priesthood authority. The process of recreating the statues links the centuries-old tradition of sculpting with today’s technology.Īlso the Church is linking its longtime use of the Christus statue with this first-time display of apostle statues in Rome and a key symbol found on one - the keys Peter holds in his right hand. The statues underscore the connection between the Holy Land, Rome and Salt Lake City - the geography of the Bible with the city central to Christianity over the ages and now with the Latter-day Saints’ headquarters city in Utah. More recently, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints digitally mapped the statues in Copenhagen, quarried marble in Carrara to fashion the modern-day replicas and then placed the reproductions within view of its new Rome Italy Temple, the Church’s first in a biblical land.īut there’s more of a link here than just the three European cities. In the early 1800s, a Danish sculptor trained in Rome crafted sculptures of Jesus Christ and 12 New Testament apostles - first of clay, then of plaster and finally of Carrara marble, with all 13 destined for a redesigned Copenhagen cathedral. It’s the second time in as many centuries those cities have been linked with the likes of Peter, James, John and Paul. ROME, Italy - The ancient apostles have traveled again, from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Carrara, Italy, and on to Rome.
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