Comment on 2.[??].1794

Incomprehensible. Dyveke Helsted, op.cit., p. 27 suggests nok snaket (enough said(?), but this does not seem to make much sense in the context. If one looks at the visual picture of the text as a whole, there is a possibility that Thorvaldsen intended to write “nov. Aaret (nov. the year)”; thus the reading should be “2de nov Aaret (the second of Nov. the year) 1794”. This reading makes good sense, but in that case there would be a misspelling (“nok” instead of “nov”). It is, of course, not unknown for Thorvaldsen to make spelling mistakes, see the referential article about Thorvaldsen’s Spoken and Written Language.

Last updated 03.12.2014