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178 COPENHAGEN. Chap. XI.
his bas-reliefs, which he might dispose of, and by the
proceeds recommence some new trade or occupation.
Thorvaldsen, ever open to the appeals of his
countrymen, composed the bas-relief of “ Christian Charityit
arrived too late; the merchant had already sunk under
the weight of his misfortunes; but his children benefited
by the kindness of the artist, and received the price of
the marble bas-relief now in the church of Our Lady at
Copenhagen.
Having finished with all sacred subjects, let us again
turn to the profane—to the “ Kneeling Angel ” *—for
sacred I cannot term her—pronounced by Thorvaldsen
himself to be his best work. Well, it would be arrogance
on my part to contradict him: beautiful it is, no one can
deny, but not the beauty of holiness. We read how the
artists of the middle ages, before composing the portrait
or statue of some holy saint, watched, fasted, and prayed,
until they worked their ideas into a state of mental
extasy, and then were delivered of those gems of the ideal
holy and undefiled, such as Raphael painted, the glory
of each southern gallery. So did not Thorvaldsen. He
thus expressed his ideas to a friend : “ My statue shall
be half woman, half angel.” The real woman, his
model, was present before his eyes, and the angel, a mere
creation of the brain, was nowhere; so the daughter of
man got the best of it. The angel is a woman, such as
we have all of us seen, and that right often; a woman,
too, who would grow fat early in life, soon “show
her stays ” and lose her figure. Were there anything
sacred about the matter, English ladies would never
* The Angel of Baptism (Daabens Engel) forms the baptismal font
in the Frue Kirk".
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