Since the death of his illustrious contemporary, Canova, Thorwaldsen,
born at Copenhagen in 1771-2, has occupied the public eye as head of
the modern school. The character and powers of this master are
doubtless of a very elevated rank: but neither in the extent nor
excellence of his works, do we apprehend his station to be so high as
sometimes placed. The genius of the Danish sculptor is forcible, yet
is its energy derived more from peculiarity than from real excellence.
His ideal springs less from imitation of the antique, or of nature,
than from the workings of his own individual mind--it is the creation
of a fancy seeking forcible effect in singular combinations, rather
than in general principles; therefore hardly fitted to excite lasting
or beneficial influence upon the age. Simplicity and imposing
expression seem to have hitherto formed the principal objects of
his pursuit; but the distinction between the simple and rude, the
powerful and the exaggerated, is not always observed in the labours
of the Dane. His simplicity is sometimes without grace; the
impressive--austere, and without due refinement. The air and contours
of his heads, except, as in the Mercury--an excellent example both of
the beauties and defects of the artist's style--when immediately
derived from antiquity, though grand and vigorous, seldom harmonize in
the principles of these efforts with the majestic regularity of
general nature. The forms, again, are not unfrequently poor, without a
vigorous rendering of the parts, and destitute at times of their just
roundness. These defects may in some measure have arisen from the
early and more frequent practice of the artist in relievos. In this
department, Thorwaldsen is unexceptionably to be admired. The Triumph
of Alexander, originally intended for the frieze of the government
palace at Milan, notwithstanding an occasional poverty, in the
materials of thought, is, as a whole, one of the grandest compositions
in the world; while the delicacy of execution, and poetic feeling, in
the two exquisite pieces of Night and Aurora, leave scarcely a wish
here ungratified. But in statues, Thorwaldsen excels only where the
forms and sentiment admit of uncontrolled imagination, or in which no
immediate recourse can be had to fixed standards of taste, and to the
simple effects of nature. Hence, of all his works, as admitting of
unconfined expression, and grand peculiarity of composition, the
statues of the Apostles, considered in themselves, are the most
excellent. Thorwaldsen, in fine, possesses singular, but in some
respects erratic genius. His ideas of composition are irregular; his
powers of fancy surpass those of execution; his conceptions seem to
lose a portion of their value and freshness in the act of realizement.
As an individual artist, he will command deservedly a high rank among
the names that shall go down to posterity. As a sculptor, who will
influence, or has extended the principles of the art, his pretensions
are not great; or, should this influence and these claims not be thus
limited, the standard of genuine and universal excellence must be
depreciated in a like degree.--_Meme's History of Sculpture, &c._
* * * * *