Jason and the Hope Commission

• Kira Kofoed, arkivet.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk, 2009
• Translation by David Possen

• This article describes the production of Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52, Thomas Hope’s commission of the statue in marble, A822, and the twenty-five years it took to deliver the statue. After recounting these events in detail, an attempt is made to reconstruct the causes of Thorvaldsen’s long delay in completing and delivering the statue. The article closes by presenting a series of selected primary sources relevant to the history of Jason.

Preface

Jason with the Golden Fleece was Thorvaldsen’s breakthrough work as a sculptor. It accordingly enjoys a special status: in what is already a voluminous literature on Thorvaldsen, Jason is one of the works that is written about most. As a result, the history of the statue has come to be mythologized by its narrators over time—mythologized nearly as much as the ancient legend of Jason itself. The aim of the present article is to peel off as many mythological layers as possible from Jason’s history, and instead set forth what is known of references to the statue by its contemporaries, from Thorvaldsen’s own first mention of the Jason motif, in 1800, to the delivery of the completed statue to his client twenty-eight years later. In what follows, the most significant of these statements are reviewed and assessed, and a possible explanation is offered for why it took Thorvaldsen so long to complete the statue.

It is important to emphasize that this article does not presume to supply the final or “true” account of Jason’s origins. What it does provide is a survey and evaluation of the major extant sources, making some progress possible in the effort to wrest Jason out of the mists of myth. It cannot be ruled out, however, that new material might one day be discovered that will necessitate that details of this account, or indeed larger portions of it, be rewritten or dated more precisely.

Readers should thus be prepared for an unusually detailed presentation of the history of Jason. For those who simply seek an overview, it is recommended to start with the introductory summary below, and then skip directly to the conclusion.

Summary: Thorvaldsen’s rise to fame, Thomas Hope’s commission, and the 25-year delay

In the spring of 1803, Thorvaldsen was readying himself to leave Rome and return to a less than encouraging future back in Copenhagen. Thorvaldsen’s travel grant from the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen had expired, and he was now required to return home to serve King and country. Twice by then, the sculptor had attempted to prove his ability by completing large clay models of the mythological hero Jason; but no buyer had yet appeared.

At almost the very last minute, the British-Dutch art collector Thomas Hope commissioned Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52, in marble, A822. The immediate consequence of this was to permit Thorvaldsen to extend his stay in Rome, then capital of the art world. In the longer term, the Hope commission also played a role in giving the sculptor the confidence to defy completely his obligation to work exclusively in and for Denmark. Despite this, however, Hope would have to wait for twenty-five years, and dun Thorvaldsen repeatedly, before the statue was finally completed.

In the year 1800-1801, Thorvaldsen had already produced an early clay model of Jason in life size or heroic size. Though this model met with praise in Roman artistic circles, by the summer of 1801 Thorvaldsen had destroyed it, as he could not afford to have it cast in plaster.

In late summer or autumn of 1802, Thorvaldsen tried his hand once more at Jason, this time at life-and-a-half scale. By January 28, 1803, the new clay model was virtually complete, and no later than March 19, 1803, it was cast in plaster, A52, at the expense of the author Friederike Brun.

This model came to be Thorvaldsen’s breakthrough work, and was praised highly by contemporaries. Between March 19 and 21, 1803, Hope commissioned the statue in marble; and no later than by the summer of that year, Thorvaldsen entered into a contract with the marble carvers Finelli and Keller to supply marble for the statue and carve it to the point where Thorvaldsen himself would take over. Further work on the statue, however, was repeatedly delayed. It was only in August 1828, after twenty-five years and countless dunning letters and reminder notices, that Jason with the Golden Fleece, A822, was delivered to Hope—who, satisfied, sent his thanks for receipt of the statue on August 3, 1829.

A demonstration of Thorvaldsen’s diligence

The likely spur for Thorvaldsen’s idea of making a full-size statue was the fact that his stipend from the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen was about to run out. It would thus have been to his advantage to bring with him, on his return, a representative piece that would demonstrate how far his stay in Rome had brought him as an artist. This was a common rationale at the time^I, and does not seem illogical here. Thorvaldsen’s contract with the Academy stipulated that he was to send home annual samples of his work to demonstrate his progress—and so far he had only sent minor works home. It therefore seems logical that, at the end of his stay, Thorvaldsen would wish to test and prove his talent with a full-size statue.

According to Thorvaldsen’s biographer Just Mathias Thiele, there is a clear connection between Thorvaldsen’s choice of subject and his effort to present the abilities he had acquired during his period of study in Rome. Namely: Jason is the hero of ancient myth who, finding himself in a strange land after many hardships, completes his mission and brings home proof of that completion—the Golden Fleece that he was sent to conquer. Correspondingly, Thorvaldsen was charged with bringing home his own proof (i.e., his statue of Jason) that he too, over the course of his trials/studies in Rome, had completed his mission and fulfilled what was expected of him by Academy, government, and King. In order to emphasize the allegorical connection between Jason’s and Thorvaldsen’s accomplishments, Thiele precedes his account of Thorvaldsen’s work on Jason by relating how the sculptor had cut off the heads of all of the model statues that he had made. In other words, Thorvaldsen had done battle with his own demands for perfection, just as Jason had overcome numerous enemies on his quest: “With this battle with himself and his own works, [Thorvaldsen] surely revealed, albeit without himself knowing it, that the goal that he was finally to attain was further away than usual. In this frame of mind, he now decided to produce a statue that could make an advantageous case for him in Denmark; and to that end he chose, from the history of the Greeks, to represent the hero Jason, and how he retrieved the Golden Fleece in a strange land, after overcoming all resistance^II.”

While Thiele’s phrasing is marked by nineteenth-century diction and a flair for fantastical storytelling, at the core of his explanation we ultimately find the simple desire by Thorvaldsen to prove his abilities to those back at home.

A life-size nude figure

The first clear mention of the early version of Jason appears in a letter dated 24.10.1800 from Thorvaldsen to the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. At that point Thorvaldsen was already at work on the model^III: “What concerns me now, first and foremost, is a nude figure in natural size representing Jason in the act of returning to the ship after having seized the Golden Fleece, which he wears on his left arm, while holding a spear in his right hand…”

Thorvaldsen’s idea of producing a Jason statue can probably be traced still further back. In April of the same year, Thorvaldsen had written to his mentor Nicolai Abildgaard of plans to cast a life-size statue. Thorvaldsen had even thought of carving it in marble, if his otherwise tight finances would permit it. At the time, as it happened, Rome was plagued by famine; people were starving^IV, and could rarely afford more than the most basic necessities. Thorvaldsen wrote:

“…And as soon as this is finished [the bust of Raphael, A752], I intend to try my hand at a marble statue^V in life size, provided I am not hindered in this by the present costs, as marble too is exceedingly expensive.”

The clay model is completed, and is praised by contemporary critics in Rome

By April of the following year, the clay model of Jason was certainly complete, and Thorvaldsen wrote to the Academy once more. This time he was both satisfied and despondent: while the statue had in fact garnered praise, Thorvaldsen had no money to have it cast in plaster. And if the clay model were not cast in plaster, it would be lost—it would be impossible either to display it to the Academy or carve it in marble:

“I have modeled a standing figure in [Dan. ‘over’] natural size^VI depicting Jason with the Golden Fleece, which has had the good fortune to meet with the artists’ approval. I intended to let it be cast [in plaster], but found the expense disheartening. It would have cost 36 scudi^VII, which, in these exceedingly expensive times, would have greatly inconvenienced me; and I was even less hopeful of being able to make use of such a thing, as there are no prospects of sending something off to Copenhagen.”

A letter^VIII written by Thorvaldsen’s mentor in Rome, the archaeologist Georg Zoëga, bears witness to the positive reception of Jason: “Our countryman Thorvaldsen, after having modeled a Jason with the Golden Fleece in clay in heroic size, together with a near-life-size seated figure of the Goddess of Peace bearing the God of Wealth as a child in her arm, both of which had brought him much honor, has found himself forced to tear the one down after the other without even letting them be cast in plaster, which, in these times when everything is so incredibly expensive, would have incurred greater expenses than he believed he could bear.”

How large was the first Jason?

When it comes to the size of Thorvaldsen’s first Jason, the sources conflict. In his letters, Thorvaldsen describes it as (respectively) “in life size,” “in natural size,” and “in [Dan. ‘over’] natural size”; in the final case, the Danish word ‘over’ could theoretically mean either that the model was larger than life-size, or that it was made in natural size—on which see the dictionary Ordbog over det Danske Sprog [Dictionary of the Danish Language]. Both life-size and natural size correspond to the size of the human body, which in Thorvaldsen’s own case would have been 167 cm.

The Academy in Copenhagen, which was the recipient of Thorvaldsen’s report of a Jason executed “in [Dan. ‘over’] natural size,” noted subsequently in its records that the model had been made in natural size. Accordingly, the Academy must either have understood “in [Dan. ‘over’] natural size” simply as in natural size, or have deduced the same from Thorvaldsen’s previous reports, in which he had described the model’s size as “natural.”

On the other hand, Zoëga, who must have seen the model himself, wrote “heroic size” instead. Heroic size normally means larger than life size. And Brun, who had only heard^IX about the model, wrote that it was executed in life-and-a-half size, or one-and-a-half times body size^X.

The varying descriptions of the model might mean that Thorvaldsen changed his mind along the way, making the model larger than first intended. Alternately, one may imagine that Thorvaldsen used his own height as his standard, and that this alone might have led some to believe that the model was in heroic size. At 167 cm, Thorvaldsen was in fact considered a tall man; and “heroic size” refers not to some fixed height, but simply to a figure’s being larger than an ordinary human being. Nevertheless, the precise height of Thorvaldsen’s first Jason cannot be established with certainty on the basis of the sources available.

Only a single loose draft sketch by Thorvaldsen’s own hand of Jason, C708, is known. This depicts a walking Jason with helm, spear, baldric, and sword, along with what must be assumed to be the Golden Fleece over his lowered left arm. The draft must presumably be dated 1800-1802, i.e., as a sketch of the statue of Jason with the Golden Fleece, but it is not known whether it is a sketch of the first or second model. Thorvaldsen’s general description of the first clay model, cf. the letter dated 24.10.1800, also corresponds to the appearance of the second, A52, so that it is impossible to differentiate between them on this basis. Neither baldric, sword, nor helm are mentioned in Thorvaldsen’s initial description, but this in no way means that these were only present in the 1802-03 version. They are not mentioned in the Hope contract either—which describes the original model, A52, of the second Jason, in which all of these attributes were definitely presentXI.

Thorvaldsen runs short of money, and the model is destroyed

The above citation from Thorvaldsen’s correspondence indicates that he could not even afford to let the clay model be cast in plaster, and that the much more expensive plan to carve it in marble was therefore out of the question. It is not clear from this letter, however, whether Thorvaldsen had already destroyed the model at the time of writing, or whether it could still have been cast the if the opportunity had presented itself. A close reading of the letter, and in particular of the past-tense verb “intended,” seems to indicate that the destruction of the model had already occurred. Had Thorvaldsen used a more encouraging formulation, such as “I have not yet found myself in a position to let it be cast, because of the exceedingly expensive times,” that would have indicated that the model was still intact and could have been used for casting if someone—e.g., the Academy—would have provided a subsidy. But this is purely a matter of interpretation. According to Thorvaldsen’s first biographer, J. M. Thiele^XII, the clay model was not destroyed until the spring of 1802, i.e. a full year later; but that cannot be. As early as on August 22, 1801, the archaeologist Georg Zoëga had written, in his report on art to Crown Prince Frederik, that Thorvaldsen had had to destroy the model because of a lack of funds. Thus the destruction of the model certainly took place before August 22, 1801. Whether it had already taken place when Thorvaldsen wrote to the Academy, however, cannot be determined on the basis of the sources^XIII available.

Jason rebuilt, 1802-03

On November 27, 1802, Friederike Brun wrote in her diary^XIV that she had visited Thorvaldsen’s workshop that day and seen his second version of Jason with the Golden Fleece in progress in clay. This diary entry is, at present, the earliest source that mentions the new Jason. Today the clay model is known indirectly through the cast^XV version in plaster, A52, as well as through the marble version, A822, that it led to.

The occasion for Brun’s first mention of Thorvaldsen in her diary was a visit by her and the Humboldt couple to the sculptor’s workshop^XVI. There they saw the second Jason, this time certainly in life-and-a-half size, i.e., 245.5 cm tall; cf. A52.

Brun wrote^XVII:

…Thorwaldsen unser Landsmann – entschiedenes Genie zu Heroen gestalten – Sein Jason wovon Er das Modell 1 1/2 Lebensgröβe vollendet hatte u[nd] weil es zu Groβ zum ausbrennen war u[nd] Er kein Geld zum abformen einmal hatte zerschmeiβen muβte – jetzt in 5 4 Tagen wieder aufgerichtet – voll Geist Kraft u[nd] Bewegung – schöner Kopf Haar u[nd] Ohren steht fest auf Seinen Beinen (welches Canovas Helden nie u[nd] selten die neüen thun)…

If Brun’s account of the four-day period is to be believed, then Thorvaldsen must have started the modeling^XVIII process on November 11, 1801.

Rasmus Emil Bruun cited^XIX one of Thorvaldsen’s assistants as having explained that, by constant daily work, Thorvaldsen could model a full-size statue to completion in just six weeks. Bruun’s specific example was Dancing Girl, A178; but Jason, which was one-and-a-half times life size, presumably took just as long to complete, even the second time^XX. Thiele^XXI assumed that work on the new Jason had already begun during “the late summer of 1802,” but that assumption is not supported by the sources.

Nevertheless, the modeling process does seem to have been quite far advanced by the time of Brun’s visit, given that she commented on such details as the hair and ears. On the other hand, there was clearly much left to do. On her next visit to Thorvaldsen’s workshop two months later, on January 28, 1803—once again in the company of the Humboldts^XXII—Brun wrote^XXIII of the statue, inter alia, that its “legs—hands—[and] feet are not yet finished, and the last hand is missing from the whole clay mold—” In Brun’s revised Danish version of her diary entry, the following appears: “Arms, legs, hands, and feet are not yet fully modeled, but are already drawn completely.”

It is thus unclear whether Brun’s highly precise dating of the start of Thorvaldsen’s modeling work can be taken at face value. Nor can one pinpoint when the clay model’s finishing touches were completed—though this must have been the case before March 19, 1803, the definite date by which the model had been cast in plaster. More on this below.

From clay to plaster: When was the model cast, and at whose expense?

The next point of uncertainty in the story of Jason is the date of its casting in plaster. We can, however, safely say who paid for it: this was Brun, as is confirmed by the testimony of Georg Zoëga, art critic Carl Ludvig Fernow, and Thorvaldsen himself. Even Thiele, who was originally of a different opinion, reached the conclusion that this was likely the case^XXIV.

In a letter^XXV dated March 21, 1803, Georg Zoëga wrote about the casting of Jason: “Mde Brun en a fait la depense.” This quotation is contemporaneous with the event that it describes. Zoëga must be regarded as a reliable source, since he both lived in Rome and served as Thorvaldsen’s adviser in questions about antiquity.

During the same year, the aforementioned Fernow made the first well-known and highly significant mention^XXVI of the statue, in which he reported, inter alia, that Brun had paid for the plaster casting. Fernow stayed in Rome during the winter of 1802-03 and spent a great deal of time with Brun^XXVII, so his report should also be regarded as a first-hand account.

In his later years, finally, Thorvaldsen himself told Baroness Christine Stampe that Brun had paid^XXVIII.

On the other hand, none of the sources provides a precise date for the casting of the statue.

Brun’s diary entry of January 28, 1803 indicates that the model was not yet finished by that point, and so the casting cannot have happened before then. Another entry provides a corresponding end date: on Saturday, March 19 of the same year, Brun recorded in abbreviated form^XXIX that she had held a festive gathering to celebrate Thorvaldsen’s Jason. Both the date and the celebration are confirmed in the aforementioned letter by Georg Zoëga to Herman Schubart, where Zoëga wrote that the subject of the celebration was precisely the casting of Jason in plaster: A Votre retour Vous verrez le Jason de M. Thorvaldsen formé en plâtre. Mde Brun en […] a donné une fête en cette occasion.

In her 1812 / 1815 revised version of the diary entry, Brun herself wrote that the celebration was of both the casting of the statue in plaster and its commission on marble. But this mention of the commission can possibly be attributed to a misplacement of memories: Unsers Thorwaldsen’s Jason, seine erste Statue und die jüngste der Antiken, war nun aus der Form, ja, war schon in Marmor durch den reichen Holländer, oder, wie mir Andre gesagt, Schottländer Hope bestellt, und also ihre Unsterblichkeit im Reiche der Erscheinungen gesichert. Unser Aller Freude hierüber war so groß, daß ich beschloß, sie in einem kleinen Feste auszulassen^XXX […]

Given the above, the casting^XXXI of Jason must have taken place between January 28 and March 19, 1803.

Hope’s commission – when and how?

Thiele’s account of the visit to Thorvaldsen’s workshop by Sir Thomas Hope, the Anglo-Dutch art collector, banker, and man of means, has a fantastical, legendary air. According to Thiele, Hope made his appearance on the very day when Thorvaldsen ought to have embarked on his dreaded return trip to Copenhagen, but had to postpone his departure by a single day because of sudden passport problems on the part of his traveling companion^XXXII.

Thiele reported^XXXIII that Hope’s visit to the workshop and prompt commissioning of Jason in marble can be dated to the middle of March 1803, or perhaps as early as 8.3.^XXXIV, i.e., the sixth-year anniversary of Thorvaldsen’s arrival in Rome. It is unknown what basis Thiele had for this assumption. His conjecture about the actual anniversary date seems all too fantastical to be entirely reliable, and the traveling companion’s convenient passport problems smack more of legend than of fact. Thorvaldsen himself, however, did not contradict this story when it was presented to him in 1829, when the architect Frederik Ferdinand Friis read the manuscript of Thiele’s first biography to him aloud. In that context, Thorvaldsen’s only correction^XXXV was to add that the traveling companion was a sculptor from Berlin who later “died.”

This should probably not be taken as a univocal guarantee of the story’s truth, but rather as acceptance of the triumph of a good story over the tedium of mere facts. It is clear that Thorvaldsen had indeed prepared for a return trip in the spring of 1803, but evidence suggests that he was not quite as close to leaving Rome as Thiele represented^XXXVI him.

Thorvald Jensen’s (1844-1921) depiction of Hope’s first visit to Thorvaldsen’s workshop contains much mythic material: Thorvaldsen is shown waiting with packed suitcases; Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52, stands illuminated and elevated behind him (albeit in its reworked form from the 1830s); Thomas Hope, dark and robed as fate itself, enters the workshop—and, by commissioning the statue, assures Thorvaldsen of a shining future. Hope was described by contemporaries as a shy and unsightly man; whether the robe was added to emphasize these characteristics, or simply to add to the story’s tension, is not known. Thorvald Jensen, Thomas Hope arriving in Thorvaldsen’s Studio to buy Jason with the Golden Fleece, 1872, lithograph, 451×291 mm, E2250

Hope commissions Jason in marble

It is Georg Zoëga who must be credited with the most accurate dating of Hope’s commission of Jason in marble. On Monday, March 21, 1803, Zoëga had begun the letter to Herman Schubart mentioned previously, in which he wrote inter alia about the casting of Jason in plaster and the festive gathering hosted by Brun. Zoëga also wrote that Thorvaldsen had not yet found a customer willing to commission a completed Jason in marble. To this end, Brun had written to Denmark to track down a possible client there, and Wilhelm von Humboldt had written to Berlin and Weimar for the same purpose; but both had no luck. Put briefly, it is clear that when he started the letter, Zoëga had not yet heard the news of Hope’s commission.

As Zoëga was closing the letter, however, Thorvaldsen broke in with the long-awaited news. Zoëga^XXXVII wrote: J’y etois pour fermer la lettre, dans cet instant M. Thorvaldsen vient me faire part que M. Thomas Hope l’a engagé à faire son Jason en marbre. Je m’en réjouis, et Vous ferez autant.

Hence Jason was commissioned no later than on March 21, 1803—indeed, perhaps even on that very day, if we assume that Thorvaldsen related the news to Zoëga immediately after Hope’s visit. In any event, there cannot have been a delay of more than a few days, as the rumor must have spread quickly, and according to Zoëga the commission was not the reason for the party organized by Brun a mere two days previously, on Saturday, March 19.

We do not know whether Zoëga attended Brun’s party. It is certainly possible that Hope appeared at Thorvaldsen’s studio on the 19th and, with an oral agreement, gave the celebration a new basis then and there. This would be consistent with Brun’s later account of the events. Nevertheless, it does not seem likely that Thorvaldsen would have waited so long to pass along the good news to Zoëga, his mentor in all things Roman.

In sum, we must conclude that Hope’s commissioning of Jason likely took place no earlier than on March 19, 1803, and no later than on March 21 of the same year. Whether we can narrow the dating any further depends on how we weigh the respective testimony of Brun and Zoëga. It is evident in any case that Thiele’s hypothesis—that the Hope commission took place in early March, possibly even on Thorvaldsen’s “Roman birthday”—cannot hold.

Thorvaldsen signs the contract for Jason with the Golden Fleece, A822

The contract between Hope and Thorvaldsen was likely not dated any more precisely than le Mars [March] 1803 at first signing. It was originally drawn up in duplicate, presumably with one copy for Hope and one for Thorvaldsen. Neither of these originals is known today, but the Archive does possess a transcript of Hope’s copy, made in May 1821 by Giovanni Raimondo Torlonia, Hope’s banker in Rome. In this transcript, which one must assume is literal, there is an empty space next to the contract’s first endorsement^XXXVIII, at the spot where the exact date in March should have appeared. From the above, however, we do know that the oral commission must have taken place on March 21, or at most one or two days earlier.

The second signature, which was added to the original contract at payment of the first installment, is dated March 23, 1803. But because the transcript alone does not reveal whether there were differences in ink or handwriting between the first and second endorsements of the original contract, it cannot be determined whether the contract was drawn up immediately upon Hope’s first visit, or whether the agreement was initially an oral one, and was not put in writing until March 23.

From the dating of the first installment payment, however, it is clear that, contra Thiele’s^XXXIX report, Hope did not in fact make an initial payment to Thorvaldsen on the immediate occasion of his visit to the sculptor’s workshop. After all, the first payment can be dated securely only to March 23, 1803—i.e., to at least two days after Thorvaldsen told Zoëga about the order. If Hope had in fact given Thorvaldsen an advance at their very first meeting, it would have been over and beyond the agreed price of 600 Roman sequins set out in the contract, and also beyond the bonus that was to be paid to Thorvaldsen if Hope declared himself satisfied with the result upon receipt. That bonus is not included in the contract itself, but was mentioned, without no amount specified, by Hope’s agent Patrick Moir in a dunning notice to Thorvaldsen sent on 8.4.1806.

It is evident from several sources—Thiele I, p. 183; Caroline von Humboldt’s letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe of 20.4.1803^XL; and August von Kotzebue’s mention of it in Der Freymüthige^XLI, a Berlin weekly—that this bonus was for 200 sequins, which may be assumed to be correct.

It thus hardly seems probable that Hope would have given Thorvaldsen a further advance beyond the agreed-upon total of 800 sequins. A likelier explanation is that, by the time Thiele came to write of the incident many years later, the delay of approximately two days had faded into the “promptly” of a compelling narrative.

Contents of the contract

With respect to its contents, Thorvaldsen’s contract with Hope is among the more^XLII comprehensive of the contracts extant in the Archive’s collection. The model for the marble version is specified as the one^XLIII Hope had seen in Thorvaldsen’s studio by the Piazza Barberini, namely, Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52. The subject of the statue is described in its main features: mention is made of Jason’s lance and the Golden Fleece, and the height is set as 11 Roman palmi^XLIV. The price is indicated as 600 Roman sequins^XLV, to be divided into four installment payments:

• a first installment to be paid on completion of the model;
• a second installment to be paid on the arrival of the marble block in Rome;
• a third installment to be paid when the marble block had been carved to the point where only the finer finishing touches remained;
• and a fourth installment to be paid on final completion of the statue.

The additional bonus of 200 sequins, mentioned previously, does not appear in the contract.

It is unknown whether the lack of precise dating of the first endorsement on the transcript (cf. above) stems from the original contract or from the process of transcription^XLVI, e.g., due to difficulties in deciphering the date.

Underneath the main text of the contract and its first endorsement, Thorvaldsen subsequently acknowledged receipt of the first three installments, on the respective dates March 23, 1803, August 27, 1804, and February 27, 1805. The contract itself offers no information about receipt of the fourth installment. The fourth installment is mentioned, however, in a letter to Thorvaldsen dated 8.4.1806 from Hope’s agent Patrick Moir. In the letter, Moir stated on Hope’s behalf that the fourth installment could be collected at Torlonia, inasmuch as Hope then assumed that Jason must have been ready for shipment to England. But Jason was not finished at that point; and judging by a letter from Hope to Thorvaldsen dated 6.4.1819, it seems that, as late as 1819, Thorvaldsen still had not collected the fourth installment payment. More on this later.

Completion of the plaster model — Hope’s first payment

Stig Miss, op. cit, p. 14, assumes that the statue was cast in plaster, A52, just before the celebration on March 19, 1803. This makes good sense, inasmuch as the first installment from Hope was paid out on March 23—and that particular installment, according to the literal terms of the contract, was to come due when the model was finished, i.e., cast in plaster. If the date of payment is taken as concrete evidence of this completion, it would follow that the plaster model was not entirely finished until just before March 23.

Nevertheless, the demolding of the cast may well have taken place days (and likely even weeks) earlier. After demolding, the plaster model needed to dry and be reassembled, examined and scrutinized for plaster burrs, etc. This work obviously took some time. It may well have been that Hope saw the plaster statue at some point during this process, and believed that it was already finished; after all, he was clearly impressed enough by the plaster model to order it made in marble^XLVII on the spot. What is certain is that he could not have observed the clay model, since such models were almost always destroyed during the demolding process, and the clay was recycled to the extent possible.

This would also explain why, according to the contract, the first installment was to fall due at the model’s completion—a formulation used only seldom in Thorvaldsen contracts. Another possible explanation is still simpler, namely, that it took some time for Hope to get the money released for payment.

Whatever the case may be, the plaster model must have been completely finished by March 23 at the latest, since the first installment was paid out on that date. It must accordingly be assumed that, in this case, the actual conditions of payment corresponded more or less with the contract’s literal wording. Later on, as we shall see, only perfunctory correspondences obtained.

The production of Jason with the Golden Fleece, A822

The contract with Finelli and Keller

It is not known precisely when Thorvaldsen began work on the marble version of Jason, A822, inasmuch as the contract he entered into with the marble carvers Pietro Finelli and Heinrich Keller, covering the delivery of a block of marble and execution of the initial work on the statue, was not dated precisely at either its first or second signing. The first exact dating stems from August 3, 1805, when the third payment to the carvers took place. The contract must therefore have been entered into earlier; and indeed, for the reasons listed below, it was evidently entered into no later than the summer of 1803.

The contract specifies that the marble carvers were both to purchase and to deliver (that is, to pay to transport from the marble quarry in Carrara to Thorvaldsen’s workshop in Rome) a marble block of the highest quality. The block was to be flawless, with no blemishes visible before carving began. The carvers were to cut and sculpt it into a statue up to the point where the toothed chisel was to be used, i.e., where the basic carving of the statue in all three dimensions was complete, and only the final adjustment and perfecting by the master himself^XLVIII remained. The price for purchasing and delivering the marble block, together with the carvers’ own sculpting work, was set at 650 Roman piasters^XLIX, of which 300 were to be paid immediately, while the remaining 350 were to be disbursed as needed.

The marble block arrives in Rome—Hope’s second installment payment

By the date of Hope’s second installment payment, which according to the transcript took place on August 8, 1804, it seems that there was only a perfunctory correspondence between the letter of the contract and events on the ground. The installment was supposed to have been paid on the marble block’s arrival in Rome, but as early as September 2, 1803, Zoëga^L had written to Schubart: L’ébauchement du Jason est très avancé …

Jason, in other words, was already being sculpted by Finelli and Keller at the start of September 1803, and Thorvaldsen himself had moved to another workshop, to avoid the air full of marble dust and the severed pieces and fragments that flew through the air during the carving work. It follows that the marble block must have reached Thorvaldsen no later than during the summer of 1803: otherwise the carving process could not have been as “advanced” as Zoëga described it. This indicates, in turn, that Thorvaldsen must have entered into his contract with the assistant sculptors soon after Hope’s commission on March 19-21, or at the latest over the course of the summer.

There are several sources that confirm this early start on Jason, and correspondingly substantiate an early dating of Thorvaldsen’s contract with Finelli and Keller.

By around February 1, 1804, the basic work on Jason had progressed far enough that Thorvaldsen himself was to take over the work: “My Jason is so far along that it is waiting^LI for me; but I do not yet dare to work in my workshop on account of the humidity,” he wrote to Schubart.

In other words, by the beginning of 1804 the statue had apparently been carved and sculpted in marble to the point where Thorvaldsen himself was to take over and undertake the last adjustments and fine-tuning^LII.

Pauline Dorothea Frisch, another visitor to Rome, also saw Jason well underway in marble on April 5, 1804^LIII, when she visited his workshop: Sein Jason eilt seiner Vollendung in Marmor entgegen. What is more, an English journal^LIV published in 1804 also describes Jason as being sculpted out of a beautiful marble block.

Thiele^LV assumed that Thorvaldsen’s contract with Finelli and Keller dated to his trip to Carrara at the end of August 1804; but in light of the above, this can hardly be accurate.

Given that the marble block cannot have arrived in Rome as late as August 1804, and given that the transcript is simply a transcription of Thorvaldsen’s original contract with Hope, it seems not unreasonable to assume that there could be an error in the transcript’s dating of the second installment payment, namely, the installment that was supposed to be disbursed upon arrival of the marble block in Rome. Suppose, in particular, that the correct date was not August 27, 1804, but August 27, 1803. This would bring the payment of the installment into closer alignment with the contract’s provisions, and would also explain how Finelli and Keller would have had the period from August 1803 to the winter or spring of 1804 to carve and sculpt the marble block up to the point where Thorvaldsen would take over. The alternative is that the second installment was paid out much later than, and perhaps even more than a year after, the actual arrival of the marble block; but it seems unlikely that Thorvaldsen would have waited so long for money that he was contractually entitled to and, indeed, may well have needed for use. In any event, there does seem to have been some slight delay in the payment of the second installment beyond the arrival of the marble block in Rome, inasmuch as it would have been impossible, during the period from August 28 to September 2, 1803, for the assistant sculptors to have carved the marble to the point where Zoëga could rightly describe their work as très avancé.

From the receipts for Thorvaldsen’s payments to Finelli and Keller, it emerges that the marble carvers were paid 150 piasters on “August 28”—with no year specified. Because the next installment is dated in the spring of 1805, however, it is clear that this August date refers either to 1803 or to 1804. Given that Thorvaldsen may well have received Hope’s second installment payment on August 27, 1803 (see the above thesis regarding an erroneous date in the transcription of Hope’s contract with Thorvaldsen), it is tempting to assume that Thorvaldsen’s payment to his assistants followed immediately thereafter, and must accordingly be dated August 28, 1803. It may thus be regarded as probable that Thorvaldsen had already entered into his contract with Finelli and Keller during the spring or summer of 1803, given that he had already made one payment prior to the “August 28” payment.

Nor is it inconceivable that, shortly after entering into his contract with Hope, Thorvaldsen signed a contract with the assistants who were to undertake the basic marble carving necessary. Thorvaldsen promptly paid the marble carvers 300 piasters, presumably for the purchase of the marble block: this would have enabled them to investigate the quality and price of various candidate blocks, and deliver the selected block to Thorvaldsen’s workshop at some point prior to August 27, 1803, at which point Hope accordingly paid out his second installment. With this money in his pocket, Thorvaldsen could then pay his assistants another 150 piasters—either because the marble block had proven more expensive than expected, or as compensation for their labor.

Jason carved “down to the points”—Hope’s third installment payment

It is already evident from the above that by late winter or spring 1804, the work on Jason had already reached a very advanced phase. By this point the statue seems merely to have awaited Thorvaldsen’s final touches. This stage is described in the contract, and ought to have triggered payment of the third installment.

However, according to the receipt recorded on the contract transcript, the third installment was not in fact paid until February 27, 1805: a full year, evidently, after the statue seems to have reached the relevant stage. Once again—though to raise this possibility is to flirt with an interpretive slippery slope—there may well be a dating error in the transcription, perhaps a compound of the first error (suggested above); alternately, it may be that Finelli and Keller had not in fact made as much progress as Thorvaldsen had indicated to Schubert. It is difficult to conclude anything from Frisch’s statement other than that the sculpting of the statue was well underway: her note does not indicate what precise stage in the process Jason had reached when she saw it. Thorvaldsen’s payments to Finelli and Keller for Jason may have continued up to January 3, 1807, which can be read as an indication that their work on the statue was not finished until the winter of 1806-07^LVI. Another possibility is that Thorvaldsen could not afford to pay his assistants the entire remaining amount at once, and paid them in smaller installments instead. Meanwhile, these late payments may also have been completely unrelated to Jason: they may have been compensation for the carvers’ work on other pieces.

The account books from Thorvaldsen’s workshop reveal that further work on Jason was performed by both stonemasons and assistant sculptors during the years 1820-21, 1824-25, and 1827. In other words, the carving of the marble, which generally was done before Thorvaldsen undertook his own finishing touches, was in fact only completed decades later. This suggests that Hope’s third installment may in fact have been disbursed before there was a full contractual basis for it. Here it must be said, however, that assessment of the completion of this third phase may very well have been a matter of interpretation. In his letter to Schubart, Thorvaldsen clearly regarded his assistants’ work as completed; but his later payments to the same assistants and others indicate otherwise. Perhaps Thorvaldsen keenly wished to give Schubart a better impression of Jason’s progress than reality permitted. Alternately, perhaps Thorvaldsen had come to the view—as his own workload had grown, thanks to other incoming commissions, and as his assistants had become more experienced—that his assistants should do even more of the sculpting work before he himself would take over.

Jason is assumed to be finished—Hope’s fourth installment payment

On 8.4.1806, Hope’s agent Patrick Moir wrote to Thorvaldsen on his client’s behalf, expressing his hope and assumption that Jason was nearly ready for shipment. At that point, however, with the Napoloenic Wars looming, shipment to England had become no simple matter. In Italy, all things English were confiscated^LVII, and so Moir’s letter was greatly concerned with how to avoid this problem, namely, by omitting Hope’s revealingly English-sounding name and address from the shipment. Rather than sending the statue directly to England, Moir suggested that Thorvaldsen send it to one of his own friends in Copenhagen under his own name; then Hope himself would arrange for further transport to England. There is no receipt for this payment, however, and it is not clear from Moir’s letter whether Thorvaldsen would simply be able to withdraw the fourth installment payment from Torlonia immediately, or whether he would need to supply the banker with some form of proof that the statue was complete. Nor is it clear whether Thorvaldsen would have to wait, voluntarily or involuntarily, for the money to be paid to him.

No receipts for the disbursement of Hope’s fourth installment are extant today. In his dunning letter to Thorvaldsen dated 6.4.1819, Hope remarks that only the first two installments—by which he obviously meant installments two and three^LVIII of the contract—were paid promptly at Thorvaldsen’s request; and at the time of writing Hope had receipts for these two payments in his possession. This statement indicates that, as late as 1819, Thorvaldsen had neither requested nor received the final installment payment.

In his same letter, Moir mentions the bonus payment that Hope (cf. above) had promised Thorvaldsen, above and beyond the agreed-upon sum of 600 sequins. Inasmuch as the fourth installment of the 600 sequins is not mentioned, one may infer that this amount was disbursed at some point between 1819 and 1829, and that the receipt for this payment was subsequently lost.

Why Jason remained unfinished: initial causes

The first stage in the completion of Jason was carried out, as mentioned, by the marble carvers Finelli and Keller, who had contracted with Thorvaldsen to undertake the basic work of cutting the marble. In the summer of 1803, Keller reportedly fell and broke his leg, and so was unable to work for a long period. Finelli was thus forced either to work on Jason by himself or to find a new partner, both of which might well have caused delays. In 1805, Keller abandoned sculpting work entirely for health reasons.

Thorvaldsen himself was ill for an entire year, from approximately May 1803^LIX until well into 1804—it was not until February^LX, according to one source, or August^LXI, according to another, that Thorvaldsen wrote that he was starting to recover. It was this sickness that led him to spend the summer of 1803^LXII in Albano^LXIII in order to recuperate.

Illness^LXIV must be regarded as the main reason why Thorvaldsen did no further work (if anything) on Jason during this period. In January 1804, Thorvaldsen referred to the high humidity^LXV in his workshop as a reason why he could not work on Jason: his health could not tolerate the damp air^LXVI.

The case drags on; reminders from Hope

The first time that Hope asked (amicably) about the completion of Jason was in the aforementioned letter dated 8.4.1806, which was written by Moir on Hope’s behalf. There are no records indicating that Thorvaldsen ever responded to this letter; on the contrary, Hope’s letter of 6.4.1819 makes clear that he had heard nothing from Thorvaldsen beyond what he learned when he had visited him personally in Rome in the year 1816-17. If Thorvaldsen had replied to the 1806 letter, then his reply did not, so to speak, reach^LXVII its audience. Had Jason been shipped around 1806, Hope would surely have declared the statue’s period of production reasonable; but nothing happened, and indeed ten more years passed, all while the Napoleonic Wars continued to stand in the way of shipments to and from England—and Thorvaldsen prioritized other tasks.

No workshop account books have been preserved that might illuminate the extent to which Jason was in production during these years.

Hope’s visit of 1816-17

In 1816, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Hope was finally able to travel to Rome once more, in order to seek Thorvaldsen out in person. And judging by the letter of 6.4.1819 mentioned previously, it seems that in 1816-17 Thorvaldsen promised to complete his work on Jason without further delays. On the other hand, in 1820 Danes could read^LXVIII a rather different account of Hope’s visit to the Danish Phidias^LXIX. This report should be read, it should be noted, with an extraordinarily large grain of salt, and with the understanding that Thorvaldsen’s hometown badly wished to explain the delayed production of Jason in a manner that would reflect positively on Thorvaldsen, and so on the fatherland as well:

“About fifteen years ago, the noble Briton Thomas Hope came to Rome. He became acquainted with our Thorvaldsen, and was so struck by the talents and genius [that Thorvaldsen] had demonstrated to the age in the model for a colossal statue of Jason that he commissioned it in marble. But the period that followed—so unfavorable for the sciences, arts, and all of humanity’s noblest productions—prevented Thorvaldsen from completing, and Mr. Hope from receiving, this work that is elevated beyond all praise. But arma togis cesserunt^LXX, and Mr. Hope took advantage of the good fortune [of peace] in the year 1816 to see the new masterpiece of sculpture. The great artist, meanwhile, was inundated with commissions to such a degree that Mr. Hope, with the delicacy that so beautifully befit his sense of nobility, asked Thorvaldsen not to hurry with Jason. And because, in addition, some bad spots were discovered in the stone during the production of the statue, our countryman decided, with the delicate feeling that is the highest adornment of genius, to order another block that would be more worthy of the statue, which became the foundation of his worldly happiness.”

That Hope should have been so humble and understanding is inconsistent with his letter of 1819, and should be regarded as a tale clearly slanted toward national interests. The idea of using a new marble block, meanwhile, is attested to neither by Hope nor in Thorvaldsen’s surviving letters; so that portion of the account also seems unfounded in reality. It attests instead to an assumption that may have arisen quite naturally, given both the long production time and the fact that the purchased block’s marble was indeed quite mottled. If he had wanted to do so, Thorvaldsen would have had ample time to find another marble block during the twenty-five years that Jason was in progress. And while there likely was some irritation present with the block’s defects, the course of events makes clear that neither Thorvaldsen or Hope were prepared to pay for a new marble block or for new preparatory labor. Finelli and Keller, who had delivered the block, had disclaimed responsibility for such contingencies in their contract with Thorvaldsen. Any additional expenditure would therefore have accrued to Thorvaldsen alone; and given the slow pace that he had already adopted in his work on the statue, it seems unlikely that Thorvaldsen would have freely chosen to put still more money and work into it.

During his 1816 visit to Rome, Hope also commissioned marble busts of himself, his wife, his youngest son, and possibly his oldest son as well (Thomas Hope, A823, Louisa Hope, A824, Adrian John Hope, A826, and Henry Thomas Hope?, A266), evidently with the further hope that these new commissions would have the effect of sparking enthusiasm for the completion of Jason. According to a letter dated 25.5.1817 to the architect C.F. Hansen, Thorvaldsen in fact postponed a visit to Denmark with the claim that he could not travel before completing the commissions that he had promised to carry out.

Hope’s 1819 dunning letter

Thorvaldsen did not fulfill the promise that he had made during Hope’s visit in 1816-17, and so on 6.4.1819, Hope sent the artist a manifestly impatient dunning letter. Here Hope referred to the commission’s long history, and sharply but politely deplored the fact that Thorvaldsen had repeatedly postponed the completion of Jason for the benefit of other, far more recent commssions. Hope concluded by announcing that he had now transferred the matter to the Torlonia banking house, which would be empowered to threaten Thorvaldsen with punitive economic measures if he did not deliver the statue as quickly as possible. Thorvaldsen was thus to regard Torlonia’s instructions as Hope’s own.

There is no record of a reply to this letter in Thorvaldsen’s own hand. However, a note on the envelope stated that Thorvaldsen was to appear in person at Torlonia. If Thorvaldsen did reach an agreement with Torlonia, this was presumably an oral agreement—or was perhaps preserved in writing at Torlonia’s bank.

In 1819 Thorvaldsen was dunned^LXXI not only by Hope, but also by Torlonia through the latter’s stepson, Thorvaldsen’s friend Luigi Chiaveri. According to Thiele^LXXII, Chiaveri repeatedly told Torlonia that Thorvaldsen was abroad in order to preserve the sculptor’s reputation. While it is unknown whether this interpretation of Chiaveri’s letter is correct, it is certainly clear that Chiaveri was loath to mix friendship and business. The sentence “Scusati la mia seccatura” attests to his awareness of Thorvaldsen’s irritation at reminder notices and dunning letters.

Thorvaldsen was in Denmark from 14.7.1819 to 16.12.1820, which naturally prevented him from undertaking any work at all on the statue during this period. It is likely that he told of his upcoming trip at his meeting with Torlonia, and so received a reprieve until his return to Rome. Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts^LXXIII in fact provide evidence of work on Jason starting immediately following the sculptor’s return to Rome, on December 16, 1820, that is, from the end of December 1820 until the end of May 1821, and again in September 1821.

Torlonia takes over the proceedings, 1821-28

After Thorvaldsen’s return to Rome in 1820, the case of Jason was apparently handled exclusively by the Torlonia banking house, as Hope had menacingly announced in his 1819 letter to Thorvaldsen. In Torlonia’s letter dated May 1821, it emerges that Thorvaldsen was by then required, according to an earlier agreement with Torlonia, to have completed the statue and prepared it to be shipped. It is not known with certainty whether the agreement in question had been reached before Thorvaldsen’s trip to Denmark, or shortly after his return to Rome; but in any case Thorvaldsen appears not to have kept his word, but instead to have asked for a postponement until summer. Accordingly, Torlonia sent—as a kind of trump card on Hope’s behalf, to remind Thorvaldsen of his obligations—a transcript of the original contract^LXXIV for Jason. While there is no record of a written reply to this letter by Thorvaldsen, it emerges from Torlonia’s next letter that a new agreement (with a deadline set at the end of the summer) must have been reached at this point.

On 20.8.1821, Torlonia wrote once more, expressing his conviction that the statue must now be finished. Thorvaldsen’s draft reply is dated the next day, and reflects his views both on dunning procedures and on his own work. It is shot through with barely-concealed annoyance at the incessant reminders, and simultaneously elevates his own work high above the ordinary conduct of business:

“As I have explained to you on other occasions, it [i.e., the statue of Jason] has been worked on painstakingly, even before you honored me with your esteemed promptings. ... You will never be able to compromise on a promise once given; but you should know that, in the world of art, one cannot delimit time^LXXV precisely.”

It is abundantly clear that Thorvaldsen was annoyed at being dunned in a case that, on the one hand, no longer seemed to occupy or even challenge him artistically, but on the other hand, on account of its artistic nature, transcended the profanity of a mere business dunning letter. Nonetheless, Thorvaldsen reaffirmed the he would be finished with the statue—and satisfied with it—within a month’s time.

Two years later, on 15.4.1823, Torlonia was compelled to dun Thorvaldsen for delivery of the statue once more, after having received numerous letters (today unknown) from Hope. No written response to Torlonia by Thorvaldsen is known; but he may well have, as before, gone to meet Torlonia in person.

Torlonia dunned Thorvaldsen again on 12.6.1826 and 13.6.1827. The last dunning letter makes clear that Torlonia clearly had an agreement with Thorvaldsen about the imminent completion of Jason, and hoped to be able to send off the statue before the autumn storms arrived.

Thorvaldsen’s own friends and acquaintances, too, urged him to remove this burden from his shoulders. On 9.8.1825, for example, the author A. Andersen Feldborg indirectly prodded Thorvaldsen to finish Jason with the following words: “Britain longs for Jason. Professor Brøndsted^LXXVI, however, has passed on to me your views about the aforementioned statue, and these prompt me to believe that the longer Jason is withheld from England, the more welcome he will be.”

It cannot be determined with precision what Thorvaldsen’s views about the statue were at this point. The message implicit in Feldborg’s statement, however, seems to be that Thorvaldsen’s own growing dissatisfaction with his youthful work had led to a deliberate tactic of delaying delivery of the statue for as long as possible, in the hope that, with time, the glorification and mythologizing of Jason would both eliminate the recipient’s disappointment with the long wait for the statue and make him blind to faults that, conceivably, Thorvaldsen himself could see in the statue’s composition.

All the same, there was work being done on Jason during the years 1820-1827. Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts^LXXVII show that assistants worked on the statue during 1820-21, 1824-25, and 1827, to which we must add the time Thorvaldsen himself worked on it, as was witnessed by Thiele^LXXVIII, for example, in 1824. Thorvaldsen’s expenses^LXXIX to compensate his assistants during this period amounted to approximately 470 scudi^LXXX, in addition to the costs he had already incurred to Finelli and Keller during the period 1803-1807. Thorvaldsen’s final profit on the work, therefore, must have been insignificant, if indeed there was any at all.

Jason is shipped—after 25 years

On his many visits to Rome, the Norwegian Jørgen Knudtzon, a friend of Thorvaldsen’s, had plainly attempted to persuade Thorvaldsen to complete his statue of Jason. It was thus with relief that Knudtzon wrote to Thorvaldsen on 4.10.1828, after having received word from Chiaveri, mentioned earlier, that Jason was now completed and sent off: “You have no idea what a triumph this is for me; now I no longer need to hear remarks being made about you that are hardly advantageous.”

Thorvaldsen himself informed^LXXXI the architect Frederik Ferdinand Friis that Jason had been sent off in August 1828. This also accords reasonably well with Knudtzon’s letter. Thorvaldsen’s accompanying letter to Hope is not extant in the sculptor’s original hand, but two drafts by his amanuensis Melchiorre Missirini have been preserved, in Italian and French respectively. It emerges from Hope’s letter of reply, dated 3.8.1829, that Jason reached Hope during the winter of 1828-1829.

That Hope replied to Thorvaldsen at so late a date is apparently due to the fact that he had only then opened the package containing Jason. Until that point it had stood unseen among the busts^LXXXII and reliefs^LXXXIII that Thorvaldsen had sent along with it—some commissioned, but others free and intended as compensation of sorts for the long delay. Hope had evidently first wanted to arrange the perfect space for presentation of the statue; but now, as he laconically put it, he was finished waiting.

On September 17, 1917, Hope’s collections and possessions were put up for auction, and Mario Krohn, then director of the Museum, succeeded in purchasing not only Thorvaldsen’s renowned Jason with the Golden Fleece, A822, for the museum, but also the busts of Hope’s family members (Thomas Hope, A823, Louisa Hope, A824, Henry Thomas Hope, A825 and Adrian John Hope, A826) along with the two reliefs A Genio Lumen (The Genius of Art and Light), A828, and Cupid Received by Anacreon, Winter, A827. In 1920, after the end of World War I, the works were sent to Denmark and displayed in the Museum^LXXXIV.

Hope declared himself deeply satisfied with the result, as well as with the fact that his dream of coming into possession of the work before his death had now come true. Hope must surely have doubted at times—and for good reason—that this dream would ever be realized. In any event, Hope died on February 2, 1831—so he ended up with only about eighteen months’ daily enjoyment of the unpacked Jason.

Summary of possible reasons for Thorvaldsen’s delay

There were likely several concurrent reasons for Thorvaldsen’s long delay in completing the March 1803 commission of Jason. The following section discusses some possible main causes; but there may of course have been others in addition.

Keller’s withdrawal from the project

Starting with Thorvaldsen’s third payment to Finelli and Keller, on March 8, 1805, it was only Finelli who acknowledged receipt. This is presumably due to the fact that, in the same year, Keller withdrew from all work on sculpture projects for health reasons^LXXXV. As early as in August 1803, meanwhile, Keller had accidentally fallen and broken his leg, and so could not work^LXXXVI for a long time. This accident should probably be taken into consideration in assessing the delays that beset Jason from the very beginning, even though Finelli or Thorvaldsen could certainly have arranged for a replacement^LXXXVII.

Thorvaldsen’s illness

Thiele^LXXXVIII writes that Thorvaldsen’s work on Jason was delayed until the fall of 1804 at first because of illness, romantic troubles, and melancholy, and later because of other commissions. Thiele based this on the contract with Finelli and Keller, which he assumed stemmed from August 1804, and so proved^LXXXIX that the marble block for Jason was not purchased until that point. As explained previously, this cannot possibly have been correct—at least not with respect to the marble block. On the other hand, it may have been accurate as far as Thorvaldsen’s own work on the statue was concerned; on this see also the letter to the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen dated 6.8.1804, in which Thorvaldsen related that he hoped, after his visit to Montenero, “to be in Rome in September, in order to work there with renewed strength on my Jason…” In other words, because of his longstanding illness, Thorvaldsen had not had the strength to work on Jason or any other projects, as he describes explicitly elsewhere in the same letter.

Thorvaldsen was indeed quite ill for about a year, from May 1803 until well into 1804, as is supported by multiple sources^XC; this obviously put a stop to his workshop activity.

The Napoleonic Wars

Political circumstances probably also played a role in the delays surrounding Jason. When Patrick Moir, in 1806, asked Thorvaldsen to send the statue off, he was to do so via Denmark under the guise of being a shipment to a friend residing in Copenhagen. Because of the mutually pugnacious French-English blockade, direct shipment to England from the French-dominated continent and its ports was impossible. According to a decree issued by Napoleon on November 21, 1806, all things English were to be confiscated:

“The British Isles are pronounced in a state of blockade. All intercourse or correspondence with the British Isles is forbidden. Letters or packages addressed to England or an Englishman, written in the English language, will not be dispatched with the mails but stopped. All English subjects residing in countries occupied by France or its allies will be regarded as prisoners of war. All English properties are forfeit. All trade of English goods must cease, and every ship that has traveled to or even come into contact with England is hereby banned from French harbors.”

This decree only certified^XCI what must already have been the case, judging from Moir’s letter, as early as in April 1806.

A decree of September 17, 1807, stated further: “‘Inasmuch as England, by its latest promulgation, has emerged as the enemy of all civilized nations’ … every vessel that permits itself to be searched by English ships, or that agrees to sail to England or to make concessions to the English government … is to be seized and confiscated.”

One therefore cannot easily dismiss Thiele’s interpretation^XCII, according to which Thorvaldsen set Jason aside out of concern for the political situation—though Thiele was wrong about the timing, and his representation of the events themselves was inaccurate. For example, Thiele presents Moir’s letter in such a manner that one obtains the impression that Hope was prepared to accept a delay in sending Jason; but that is not what emerges from Moir’s letter. At the same time, Thiele may well have been right that Thorvaldsen saw the letter and the political circumstances as offering him an opportunity for delay. It is certainly quite understandable that he would have wanted to avoid, at all costs, the possibility of the statue being lost^XCIII in transport.

Only after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and Hope’s visit to Rome in 1816-17, do signs of renewed work on Jason emerge—though even then there was still no indication that the statue had reached the point where Thorvaldsen could take over the work himself, and undertake the crucial finishing touches to bring it to completion.

New commissions

Jason was undoubtedly also delayed on account of new commissions by other customers. Thiele^XCIV mentions this as a reason for delay as early as 1806. There is little doubt that economic considerations, and perhaps a tendency to take on more tasks than his workshop was immediately capable of handling, played a crucial role here—affecting not only Jason but also numerous other projects. This difficulty with allocating his time among several works at once was thus likely a more general problem for Thorvaldsen.

Flaws in the marble

Thiele^XCV states that the reason for Thorvaldsen’s reluctance to work on Jason was “flaws” in the marble. In fact, Thorvaldsen nowhere mentions such flaws in the extant sources. Others clearly noticed them, however, and found them disfiguring, such as^XCVI the poet Christian Molbech (1783-1857) and A. Andersen Feldborg.

In the Danish press^XCVII, too, an 1820 article described the marble’s “bad spots”: “And because, in addition, some bad spots were discovered in the stone during the production of the statue, our countryman decided, with the delicate feeling that is the highest adornment of genius, to order another block that would be more worthy of the statue, which became the foundation of his worldly happiness. ...”

Nevertheless, as mentioned previously, this talk of a replacement block must have been untrue.

The marble version of Jason with the Golden Fleece, A822, is indeed deeply stained by black veins, and it is certainly conceivable that, despite Thorvaldsen’s failure to mention the problem, irritation with this unexpected flaw did indeed help make the work of completing the statue less satisfying to the sculptor. In 1807^XCVIII, for example, Thorvaldsen complains in a letter to Herman Schubart that the relief The Dance of the Muses on Helicon, presumably A705, had not become as beautiful as desired because the marble had turned out to be mottled with spots.

Dissatisfication with his youthful work

In his delivery letter, Thorvaldsen states that the statue did not turn out as perfect in his eyes as he had wished, and that he had tried in vain, while working on it, to correct what he regarded as its flaws. At first glance, one could read this as a reference to the mottled marble that had emerged in the sculpting process; but other sources suggest that this is not the case. Instead, in Thorvaldsen’s eyes the flaws in Jason were compositional.

Consider the following report by Thiele of his visit to Thorvaldsen’s workshop in May 1824:

“In the month of May 1824 [I] encountered [Thorvaldsen], who was about to complete the head, while one of his best students worked on completing the ram’s skin. Upon seeing the artist with the chisel on the hero’s brow, [I stated] that it must have been a labor of love to complete a statue that held such striking significance for his artistic career. ‘No,’ he responded, letting his arm sink down, ‘now it is a bit of a sour thing! When I first made this statue,’ he continued, ‘I found it good; and it is still good now; but now I can in fact do something even better.’”

J. B. Dalhoff^XCIX, too, writing about his father, the bronze caster Jørgen Dalhoff, retold a similar account, which allegedly had been related directly by Thorvaldsen to the bronze caster:

”[Thorvaldsen:] ‘Do you know why Jason was never finished, though I had received the money for him? ... Well, I hated the statue, because he was made of tobacco … I wanted to prove myself before I left Rome. Each day I ran to the Vatican and swallowed what I could of the ancients, and did not turn around on the way back. Then I ground away at it, sniffing [tobacco] all day long to tickle my nerves. Not even the tiniest of my own thoughts made it onto that statue, and because it needed to be great, I strove far beyond my abilities, and fell ill…’”

Another indication that Thorvaldsen was not simply referring to the mottled marble, but in fact to the statue as a whole, is his reworking of the plaster model, A52, in the 1830s, during which (among other things) the head was sawn off and turned, and new plaster was added, particularly to the breast and knees^C. One account of the reason for this is provided in a letter written by Gottlieb Bindesbøll to his brother Severin Bindesbøll on 28.7.1836^CI. Here Gottlieb Bindesbøll refers to the reworking of Jason as follows:

“He has changed his Jason quite a bit, cut off the head and turned it straighter[,] covered the body with plaster and reworked it entirely, there are many who doubt that it has become better [than] before, and when you ask him why he is doing it, he says[:] Because it looks like armor, not like flesh.”

In the 1830s, Thorvaldsen reworked the original model of Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52. While he did not produce a new marble version of the statue himself, in 1862 the Norwegian sculptor Brynjulf Larsen Bergslien, under the supervision of master sculptor H. W. Bissen, did complete the slightly altered^CII version of Jason with the Golden Fleece^CIII. The statue was installed at the Museum, in accordance with its policy at the time of producing new marble versions of the works of Thorvaldsen that it “only” owned in plaster, or did not own at all. In 1938, the statue was donated by the Museum to the City of Copenhagen on the occasion of the centennial of its bestowal of honorary city citizenship on Thorvaldsen. This Jason stands today at Copenhagen’s City Hall. The photographs display the statue first during the process of wrapping it at the Museum before its transferral to City Hall, and then after its erection at City Hall. Before the transfer, Thorvaldsens Museum had given the statue the inventory number A51.

Tactical presentation: Jason as a showcase piece?

Another potential theory is that the acclaimed statue of Jason, standing on display in the sculptor’s workshop, may have served as a showcase piece for Thorvaldsen’s work as a whole. Visitors were thereby reminded that it was none other than Thorvaldsen who had created this statue, which art connoisseurs claimed had best rediscovered the connection to antiquity, and which had inaugurated the new grand neoclassical style^CIV. A nearly-complete Jason may, in short, have functioned as an advertising column to attract new customers. On the other hand, the statue’s continued presence in Thorvaldsen’s workshop certainly also attested to the long delays to which this sculptor was at times susceptible. For a sympathetic viewer, this could no doubt be interpreted as a sign of quality: if one managed to acquire a sculpture by Thorvaldsen, despite the long lead time he might require, then one would be in possession of a truly exclusive work of art that bore witness to the artist’s sense of perfection. That is to say: Thorvaldsen did not deliver a work of art until he himself was satisfied with it.

Such an interpretation is reinforced by Thorvaldsen’s letter to Torlonia on the relation of time to the genesis of a work of art: ... nelle arti di Genio il tempo non puolsi esattamente circoscrivere.

A. Andersen Feldborgs letter to Thorvaldsen, dated 9.8.1825, also arguably supports this interpretation, inasmuch as Feldborg was of the view that the longer Jason was withheld from England, the better reception it would obtain when the statue finally arrived.

Conclusion

The clay model of Jason was cast in plaster at some point after January 28, 1803, on which date the model was not yet fully completed, and well in advance of March 19 of the same year, when Friederike Brun held a festive gathering to celebrate its casting.

By comparing the mentions of Jason in the archive with newly discovered sources, Thomas Hope’s legendary commission of Thorvaldsen’s acclaimed work can be dated to a narrower range than previously. The commission cannot have taken place before March 21, as was previously assumed, but to a range of two to three days, namely, the period from March 19 to March 21; and it can possibly be dated to a single day, namely, none other than March 21, 1803, the day when Georg Zoëga heard the news directly from Thorvaldsen.

The date of Thorvaldsen’s contract with his first assistant sculptors, Finelli and Keller, can also be adjusted by at least a year with respect to Thiele’s dating, while the earlier dating by Stig Miss here finds further support [cf. Miss, op. cit., p. 14, and Thiele I, p. 244]. It is now evident that the contract can have been concluded no later than in the summer of 1803. This proves that Thorvaldsen did not in fact wait six months or a year to initiate work on the statue, but quickly ordered the marble and contracted for the roughest of the carving work.

Though Danish newspapers claimed otherwise, Hope did not in fact urge Thorvaldsen to take his time completing Jason when he visited the sculptor in 1816-17. On the contrary: Thorvaldsen received regular reminders from Hope, and later from the Torlonia banking house, demanding in increasingly strident tones that he finish the work promptly. Thorvaldsen excused himself by insisting that in the world of art, strict deadlines have no place: things take as long as they take. Meanwhile, the claim that Thorvaldsen had offered to sculpt the statue afresh in a new marble block also seems unfounded in reality.

There were presumably numerous concurring causes for the fact that it took so long for Thorvaldsen to complete his breakthrough work. It seems likely that some of these causes were the following:

• Thorvaldsen’s illness
• The assistant sculptor Keller’s early withdrawal from the project, as a result of his fall and poor health
• The state of hostilities in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, which made shipment to England difficult
• New commissions, which Thorvaldsen prioritized above Hope’s for economic or other reasons
• The sculptor’s dissatisfaction with the statue’s composition
• The sculptor’s dissatisfaction with the quality of the marble (the black veins in the stone)
• It was presumably attractive for Thorvaldsen to have the nearly complete Jason standing in his workshop, so that visitors would realize that he was the originator of the renowned statue.

Chronological survey of significant references to Jason with the Golden Fleece:

References

• For sources from the letters of Thorvaldsen and his contemporaries, see the above table of references.

• A.: ‘Thorvaldsen’, in: S. Soldin: Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn, vol. 17, no. 18 (February 29), Copenhagen 1820, p. 173-176..
• David Bindman: ‘Thomas Hope’s Modern Sculptures: “a zealous and liberal patronage of its comtemporary professors”’, in: David Watkin and Philip Hewat-Jaboor (eds.): Thomas Hope as Regency Designer, New Haven and London 2008, p. 135-141.
• Louis Bobé: Frederikke Brun, født Münter, og hendes Kreds hjemme og ude, Copenhagen 1910, p. 184.
• Karl Victor von Bonstetten: Reise in die klassischen Gegenden Roms zur Schilderung ihres ehemaligen und gegenwärtigen Zustandes, Leipzig 1805.
• Karl Victor von Bonstetten, Friederike Brun (ed.), Friedrich v. Matthisson (ed.): Briefe von Karl Viktor von Bonstetten an Friederike Brun, 2 vols., Frankfurt a. M. 1829.
• Friederike Brun, née Münter: ‘Noget om den danske Billedhugger i Rom: Albert Thorvaldsen’, in: Athene IV, 1815, p. 15; also published in German in 1812 in: Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, no. 191-193 and 197-198.
• Friederike Brun, née Münter: Römisches Leben, Leipzig 1833, vol. I-II.
• Friederike Brun: ‘Thorwaldsens Jason’, in: Der neue Teutsche Merkur 1803, vol. 3, p. 485-486; also published in: Iris. Ein Taschenbuch für 1804, Zürich 1804, p. 287-288.
• R.E. Bruun: ‘Noget fra Rom og om Thorvaldsen. (Af et Brev fra en dansk Reisende til Udgiveren. Jul.1817)’, in: Athene IX, Copenhagen 1817.
• J. B. Dalhoff: Et Liv i Arbejde, Copenhagen 1915-16.
• A. Andersen Feldborg: Danmark delineated; or, Sketches of the Present State of that Country. Illustrated with Portraits, Views, and other Engravings from Drawings by Eminent Danish artists, Edinburgh 1823, vol. I, Introduction, p. xvii-xx.
• A. Andersen Feldborg: Denmark delineated; or sketches of the present state of that country, Parts 1-3; illustrated with engravings from the designs of eminent Danish artists, Edinburgh 1824, vol. I, Introduction, p. 18-21.
• Carl Ludwig Fernow: ‘Kunstnachrichten und neueste Literatur von Rom.’, in: Der Neue Teutsche Merkur, vol. II, no. 8, August 1803, p. 314-15. For the complete article, see here.
• Margrethe Floryan: ‘Jasons skæbne. Om Thomas Hope, hans buste og hobbies’, in: Meddelelser fra Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen 2003, p. 43-73.
• Dagbogsindførsel fra Pauline Dorothea Frisch, geb. Tutein, in: Reise durch Deutschland, Holland, Frankreich, die Schweitz und Italien in den Jahren 1797, 1803 und 1804, Altona 1816, p. 363.
• Ludwig Geiger (ed.): Goethes Briefwechsel mit Wilhelm und Alexander v. Humboldt, Berlin 1909.
• Carl Gotthard Grass: ‘Nachrichten von den neusten Arbeiten nahmhafter Künstler aus Rom’, in: Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, 1810, no. 176-177, p. 701-702.
• Count Hawks le Grice: Walks through the Studii of the Sculptors at Rome with a brief Historical and Critical Sketch of Sculpture, Rom 1841, vol. 2, p. 81-82. The book is found in Thorvaldsen’s own library, M279.
• August von Kotzebue (ed.): [title unknown], in: Der Freymuthige, No. 87, 1803, p. 346.
• August von Kotzebue: Erinnerungen von einer Riese aus Liefland nach Rom und Neapel, vol. 2, Berlin 1805, p. 410-411.
• Meddelelser fra Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen 2003 [an informative special issue published in the wake of a March 2003 seminar at the Museum on Jason with the Golden Fleece, containing 10 articles, a bibliography, and Jason. Tekstværk for to forfattere og kor by Naja Marie Aidt and Lars Frost].
• Stig Miss: ‘Tilblivelsen af Jason med det gyldne skind – de samtidige kilder’, in: Meddelelser fra Thorvaldsens Museum 2003, Copenhagen 2004, p. 11-17.
• Christian Molbech: Reise giennem en Deel af Tydskland, Frankrige, England og Italien i Aarene 1819 og 1820, vol. 3, Copenhagen 1822, p. 226.
• Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn, no. 71, 17.6.1805, p. 1132.
• Knud Lyne Rahbek: ‘Bidrag til Litteraturartiklen’, in: Minerva, 1803, p. 337-338.
• Wilhelm von Schadow: Der moderne Vasari. Erinnerungen aus dem Künstlerleben, Berlin 1854.
• August Wilhelm von Schlegels kunstberetning til Goethe sommeren 1805, published in: Eduard Böcking: August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s sammtliche Werke, vol. 9, Leipzig 1846, chap. 5, p. 239-240: ‘Schreiben an Goethe über einige Arbeiten in Rom lebender Künstler. Im Sommer 1805’, photostat in the small prints archive of Thorvaldsens Museum, filed under 1805.
• Harald Tesan: Thorvaldsen und seine Bildhauerschule in Rom, Cologne, Weimar & Wien 1998.
• The Literary Journal, a Review of Literature, Science, Manners, and Politics. For the Year 1804, vol. 3, January-June, London 1804, no. VII, under the date April 16, 1804.
• Thiele 1831, p. 46-47.
• Thiele I-III.
• J. Versel (ed.): Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn, no. 54, June 4, Copenhagen 1804, p. 858.
• Jürgen Wittstock: Geschichte der deutschen und skandinavischen Thorvaldsen-Rezeption, Hamburg 1975.
• Jürgen Wittstock: ‘Thorvaldsen und die Deutschen. Ein Beitrag zur frühen Rezeption seiner Kunst’, in: Gerhard Bott og Heinz Spielmann (ed.): Künstlerleben in Rom. Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844). Der dänische Bildhauer und seine deutschen Freunde, Nuremberg 1991, p. 204.
• Aimé Steinlen: ‘Charles-Victor de Bonstetten, étude biographique et littéraire’, in: C.-A. Sainte-Beuve (ed.): Causeries du lundi, vol. 14, Paris 1858, p. 462-463.
• Doris og Peter Walser-Wilhelm: Bonstettiana. Briefkorrespondanzen Karl Viktor von Bonstettens und seines Kreises, vol. IX/_I, Göttingen 2002.
• [?]: ‘Indenlandske Efterretninger’, in: S. Soldin (ed.), Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn, October 9, Copenhagen 1819, p. 1288.
• [?]: ‘Römische Kunstannalen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts’ in: Italienische Miscellen, vol. 4, Tübingen 1806, p. 154-164.

Commentaries

1. Cf. Fernow, op. cit., 1803.

2. Cf. J. M. Thiele, Om den danske Billedhugger Bertel Thorvaldsen tilligemed en Fortegnelse paa de Arbeider, hvilke han indtil nærværende Tid har udført [On the Danish Sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, With A List of the Works He Has Completed Until the Present Time], ed. Selskabet for Trykkefrihedens rette Brug, Copenhagen 1837, pp. 8-9.

3. Even at this early stage, the ensuing description could just as easily fit the two extant versions of Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52 and A822—apart from the specification of its size as “natural,” i.e. life size, which differs from the existing model, which is life-and-a-half (one-and-a-half times life size). In 1850, the average height of male conscripts was 165 cm; this corresponds well with the later model of Jason, A52, which was executed in slightly below life-and-a-half size, namely, 245.5 cm. With his height of 168 cm, Thorvaldsen was himself regarded as a tall man; see, e.g., his passport dated 8.8.1810 and residence permit dated 6.9.1798.

4. For evidence that times were indeed very hard in Rome at this point, see, e.g., the letter dated November 13, 1802 from the Swiss author Karl Viktor von Bonstetten to the painter Henry Füseli (1747-1825), which reports that people were dying of hunger on a daily basis. Thorvaldsen’s reluctance to incur such high future costs must thus be said to have had a real basis in fact. Even though Bonstetten’s letter dates from 1802, and so does not correspond precisely to the time of Thorvaldsen’s letter of April 4, 1800, it undeniably reveals that the famine was serious, and had continued unabated for years: “[…] Ach die Zeiten sind schreklich; jede Nacht jeden morgen findet man hungers gestorbene. Das Elend ist unbeshreiblich […]” The letter is reproduced in Doris og Peter Walser-Wilhelm, Bonstettiana: Briefkorrespondanzen Karl Viktor von Bonstettens und seines Kreises, vol. IX/_I, Göttingen 2002, p. 405. The letter of November 13, 1802 is the continuation of a letter begun on October 29, 1802 in Albano. This characterization is further supported by Thorvaldsen’s 22.4.1801 letter to the Academy; cf. below.

5. There is, however, a remote possibility that Thorvaldsen is here referring to a different work—either a Goddess of Peace or a Melpomene—both of which may have been life-size, but which no longer exist today. For more on this, see the list of Letters Lost.

6. Cf. Ordbog over det danske Sprog, definition 2.6, i.e., with the meaning of doing something from a particular starting-point, in the present case fashioning a statue at the same scale as the human body. In this context, then, “over” does not mean super-natural size, as the word might suggest to present-day ears, but natural size. This interpretation is supported by the note added to the Academy’s protocols upon receipt of Thorvaldsen’s letter (cf. the daily register for June 30, 1801, of the Academy of Fine Arts (Royal Archives, Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts, the Academy Collection): “Following the most recent collection, a message had arrived from Thorvaldsen, the stipendiary, dated April 22 in Rome, in which he reported to the Academy that he had completed a life-size figure representing a Jason, but was unable to let it be cast [in plaster] due to lack of funds.”).

7. On this see also the separate Related Articles on Monetary Units and Cost of Living.

8. Many thanks to cand.mag. Karen Ascani for her referral to and transcription of this letter, which will be published in her forthcoming edition of Georg Zoëga’s correspondence.

9. Brun first arrived in Rome on November 6, 1802, long after the model’s destruction.

10. Cf. the diary note dated November 27, 1802, published in Walser-Wilhelm, op. cit., vol. IX/I, p. 411.

11. See, e.g., the description of the model in the letter from Wilhelm von Humboldt to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dated January 28, 1803, and the diary entry of the same date by Friederike Brun; both are included in the table of references below.

12. Cf. Thiele I, p. 172.

13. It is evident that Thiele (at Thiele I, p. 165) read Thorvaldsen’s message to the Academy as implying that the clay model would soon fall apart, i.e., in the future—perhaps as a product of his view that its destruction only occurred as late as 1802. An entirely different explanation of the clay model’s demise, meanwhile, is found in Wilhelm Schadow’s memoir, op. cit. p. 70. Here it is claimed that the clay model fell apart because Thorvaldsen had insisted that he himself craft its underlying iron structure—which then turned out not to be strong enough. However, no other extant reports support this account. Schadow first arrived in Rome in 1810, and so the information that he provides in this case is not based on first-hand knowledge. Accordingly, Schadow’s narrative should probably not be regarded as reliable, especially since we can rely on Zoëga’s report on the arts—a contemporary document—to support an alternative account.

    Nor are purely practical considerations of help in specifying the date of the model’s destruction more precisely. Regular replacement of wet cloths around the clay model would have made it possible to preserve it unchanged for a very, very long time. The only “danger” would have been mold growth; but that would not have affected the shape. As an alternative, the model could have been dried slowly, which would have confined the damage to small areas; but it cannot be determined whether Thorvaldsen’s workshop was a suitable site for controlled drying of this sort. The most likely method of preserving the model, therefore, is the use of wet cloths mentioned previously. Many thanks to curator Tobias Sørensen, Fælleskonserveringen, Kronborg Castle, Elsinore, for sharing his expertise on these matters.

14. Cf. Doris and Peter Walser-Wilhelm, Bonstettiana. Briefkorrespondanzen Karl Viktor von Bonstettens und seines Kreises, vol. IX/_I, Göttingen 2002, p. 411: Thorwaldsen unser Landsmann – entschiedenes Genie zu Heroen gestalten – Sein Jason wovon Er das Modell 1¹/₂ Lebensgröβe vollendet hatte u[nd] weil es zu Groβ zum ausbrennen war u[nd] Er kein Geld zum abformen einmal hatte zerschmeiβen muβte – jetzt in /5/4 Tagen wieder aufgerichtet – voll Geist Kraft u[nd] Bewegung – schöner Kopf Haar u[nd] Ohren steht fest auf Seinen Beinen (welches Canovas Helden nie u[nd] selten die neüen thun)... [Our countryman Thorwaldsen—a resolute genius for sculpting heroes—his Jason, of which he had completed a model of one-and-a-half times life-size, [and which] he had once destroyed, because it was too large for kiln-baking [and because] he had no money to have it cast—this he now rebuilt in 4 days—full of spirit, force, and motion—a beautiful head, hair [and] ears, standing firm on its feet (which Canova’s heroes never do, [and] the new ones only rarely)…”] Friederike Brun must, however, have been mistaken with respect to the size of the first clay model, which she here represents as having been in one-and-a-half life size; see earlier in the present article, where Thorvaldsen’s own statements are cited to the effect that the first clay model was produced in natural size, i.e., life size.

15. The original plaster version, A52, was nonetheless reworked by Thorvaldsen himself in the 1830s.

16. Thorvaldsen’s workshop was located at Piazza Barberini, evidently in Vicolo della Catena; see also the separate Related Article about Thorvaldsen’s Workshops.

17. Here cited following Walser-Wilhelm, op. cit., vol. IX/_I, p. 411: “…Our countryman Thorwaldsen—a resolute genius for sculpting heroes—his Jason, of which he had completed a model of one-and-a-half times life-size, [and which] he had once destroyed, because it was too large for kiln-baking [and because] he had no money to have it cast—this he now rebuilt in 4 days—full of spirit, force, and motion—a beautiful head, hair [and] ears, standing firm on its feet (which Canova’s heroes never do, [and] the new ones only rarely)…” See also the Danish translation at Louis Bobé, op. cit., p. 184. For a more thorough treatment of the reception of Thorvaldsen’s works by his contemporaries, including the reception of Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52 (reworked original plaster) and A822 (the marble version), see the separate Related Article on the subject.

18. On the other hand, Brun’s claims about a different chronological issue were refuted effectively by Thiele, namely, the question of how long it had taken Thorvaldsen to produce the bas-relief that won the Academy of Fine Arts’ small gold medal. Brun had claimed this was a mere four hours, but Thiele rightly countered this by distinguishing between Thorvaldsen’s first, hasty sketch and the bas-relief itself, which took several months to model. Cf. Thiele 1831, note 26, p. 149.

19. Rasmus Emil Bruun, op. cit., p. 539.

20. On the other hand, at Thiele II, pp. 199-200 and p. 208, Thiele also describes Thorvaldsen as quick at modeling. Here he writes that Thorvaldsen’s “Alexander Frieze,” A503, nearly 35 m long, was modeled in just three months, i.e., 12-16 weeks.

21. Thiele I, p. 179.

22. Following this visit, Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote the following sentence—at first glance somewhat odd—to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “It would be a shame if this truly excellent work of art were to be annihilated in plaster immediately once again.” Allegedly, this statement means that Humboldt hoped to see the statue through beyond the plaster stage, i.e., see it be executed in marble. This reading is based on, inter alia, Friederike Brun’s description in Römisches Leben, vol. II, Leipzig 1833, p. 31, of Antonio Canova’s portrait bust of Napoleon I, where this same point of view is expressed: Dieses Bild ist ein Wunder. Lebensschwellend, geistahmend, so weich, so warm erscheinend im kalten Gypse, der zwischen dem Modelle und dem Marmor steht, wir der Tod zwischen dem Leben und der Auserstehung. The same notion is repeated in Bjarne Jørnæs, op. cit. p. 120, who observes that a sculpture’s passage from idea to clay model was associated with life, its conversion from clay to plaster was associated with death, while its transformation into and execution in marble was associated with resurrection.

23. Cited following Walser-Wilhelm og Heinz Graber, op. cit., vol. IX/I, p. 442. The diary entry was reproduced in edited form in Friederike Brun, née Münter, “Noget om den danske Billedhugger i Rom: Albert Thorvaldsen” [Something About the Danish Sculptor in Rome: Albert Thorvaldsen], Athene IV, 1815, p. 15; previously published in German in Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, 1812, nos. 191-93 and 197-198.

24. In a note to his first biography of Thorvaldsen (Thiele 1831, p. 159, note 92), Thiele relates that he had originally interpreted Thorvaldsen’s statements as implying that the clay model of Jason remained standing until the wealthy art collector Thomas Hope commissioned the statue in March 1803, and thereby provided Thorvaldsen with the economic means to have it cast in plaster. In his book’s main text, however, Thiele wrote that Friederike Brun sponsored the plaster casting “at that time,” i.e. presumably in the period from February to early March 1803. In his 1850s biography (Thiele I, p. 181), Thiele presumed more conclusively that the reports of Brun’s sponsorship of the casting were accurate—though he retained mention of the countervailing fact that other, unspecified sources suggested otherwise.

25. Many thanks to cand.mag. Karen Ascani for her referral to and transcription of this letter, which will be published in her forthcoming edition of Georg Zoëga’s correspondence.

26. Cf. Fernow, op. cit.

27. Cf. Brun, Römisches Leben, op. cit., p. 35. For a more thorough discussion of the reception of Thorvaldsen’s works by his contemporaries, including Fernow’s mention of Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52 (reworked original plaster), see the separate Related Article on the subject, along with the numerous examples collated in the table of references at the bottom of the present article.

28. Cf. Stampe, op. cit., p. 93.

29. On March 19, 1803, Brun wrote in her diary: Jason-Fest – Ida Grazie! Der gute Prinz! Reine u[nd] Fröliche Seelen! Thorwaldsens bange Freüde – der Lorbeerkranz: “den Tÿnger paa min Isse!” [Danish: “It weighs on my brow!”] Er hat nie Tasso gelesen. Cited in Walser-Wilhelm and Heinz Graber, op. cit., vol. IX/I, p. 463. Tasso, which Brun here claims Thorvaldsen had never read, is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Torquato Tasso: Ein Schauspiel, most likely its third act in particular, where the princess crowns Tasso with a laurel wreath, and Tasso declares: Die Schöne Last aus deinen teuren Händen / Empfang ich knieend auf mein schwaches Haupt. (The entire play is available in digitized form here.) Brun thus represents Thorvaldsen as the commoner boy who intuitively understood, and was fully equal to, the highest degree of sophistication in the world of art. Nor was she alone in cultivating this myth. For more on this, see the Related Article on Thorvaldsen’s Education.
    For more on Brun’s festive gathering, see also Walser-Wilhelm og Heinz Graber, op. cit., vol. IX/I, pp. 501-504, in which Brun’s poem Thorwaldsons Jason and song Jasons wundervolle Abentheüer: ein Bänkelsänger Ballade are reproduced and presented as having been performed at the celebration.

30. Cf. Brun, Römisches Leben, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 101-102. Brun’s account of the festivities continues with descriptions of the participants, decorations, etc. For example, Brun’s daughter, the renowned Ida Brun performed a pantomime, in the course of which she crowned Thorvaldsen with a laurel wreath.

31. Brun’s January 1803 diary entry may be thought to suggest that, already at that point, the “clay form” at issue was a clay mold to be used during the casting of the clay model: so wie der ganzen Thon form noch die letzte Hand fehlt (original emphasis).
    Read literally, this phrasing implies that Thorvaldsen had already begun the process of casting the clay model at the end of January 1803, even though it apparently was still not a complete model (Beine—Hande—u[nd] Füsse sind noch nicht fertig).
    All the same, it still possible that this reference to an incomplete body refers not to the clay model, but to its plaster cast, whose legs, hands, and feet were still not completed. This could mean that the parts had not yet been reassembled, checked for plaster “burrs,” etc.
    Nevertheless, in her 1812/1815 publication of the revised diary entry, Brun wrote unambiguously that the legs, hands, and feet were still not fully “modeled.” The latter expression can only refer to Thorvaldsen’s work on the clay model.
    It cannot be determined with certainty whether these events came to merge in Brun’s memory over time, or whether her reference to a “Thon form” in January 1803 truly did refer to the clay model/figure and not to a concrete form/mold for use during the process of plaster casting. It is nonetheless most likely, however, that Thorvaldsen did not begin the casting process until the entire clay model was complete. Brun, then, seems to have used the term “form” in an unusual manner. Indeed: she would hardly have been able to describe the rest of the figure with such precision had the model been packed in a hard clay shell.

    In 1812, Brun wrote of Jason that at the time when Hope saw the statue, it still only existed in a plaster mold (cf. Athene IV 1815, p. 17, first printed 1812 in Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände); and Hope himself lends this account in his letter dated 1819 til Thorvaldsen.

    It thus ought to be a simple matter to establish that Brun had sponsored the plaster casting at some point prior to Hope’s visit to Thorvaldsen’s workshop. Matters have been clouded, however, by Thiele’s aforementioned remarks. Thiele’s doubt seems to have arisen on the basis of a letter sent to him from Rome by the architect Frederik Ferdinand Friis, who had read Thiele’s biography manuscript aloud to Thorvaldsen in 1831-1832 and recorded the sculptor’s reactions to the text. Here Thorvaldsen is cited as having said: “Mrs. B[run]’s anecdote is not consistent with the truth.” Thiele, and others after him, interpreted this denial as focused on the claim that Brun had sponsored the plaster casting; but this is not necessarily the case, particularly given that Thorvaldsen himself later reported to Christine Stampe that Brun had in fact paid for it—on which cf. above.
    Brun herself never claimed in writing that she had sponsored the plaster casting; and this suggests that the “anecdote” that Thorvaldsen disavowed must have been a different one. One candidate is a particular anecdote by Brun that is reproduced by Thiele, and which may very well have chafed at Thorvaldsen’s sense of honor. In Thiele 1831, note 68, p. 158, the biographer relates that at a dinner party for thirty to forty artists, presumably in the late winter of 1803, Thorvaldsen is supposed to have been asked whether he knew the young Dane who had created the renowned Jason. No doubt the purpose of this anecdote was to demonstrate Thorvaldsen’s great humility; but one may well suspect that Thorvaldsen thought that it would simply diminish his fame.

32. Thorvaldsen’s traveling companion was presumably the German sculptor Friedrich Hagemann; cf. Thiele I, p. 182, along with the letter dated 8.1.1829 from Friis to Thiele, item 17.

33. Cf. Thiele I, pp. 182-183.

34. Thorvaldsen called March 8 his “Roman birthday,” as he had arrived in Rome for the first time on that same date in 1797. See also the separate Related Article on the subject.

35. Cf. the letter dated 8.1.1829 from Friis to Thiele, item 17.

36. Schadow, op. cit. p. 70, repeats the tale of Hope’s having appeared just before Thorvaldsen was set to depart Rome; but he provides neither precise dates nor further details about the sculptor’s planned departure. Schadow had arrived in Rome only in 1810, and therefore did not witness the events at issue directly. He did, however, know Thorvaldsen well, as they both resided at Casa Buti; so he can in principle have heard the story directly from Thorvaldsen himself.

37. Many thanks to cand.mag. Karen Ascani for her referral to and transcription of this letter, which will be published in her forthcoming edition of Georg Zoëga’s correspondence.

38. Because it is a transcript, the document naturally does not contain the original signatures, but rather includes copies of these marked Signé or firmato.

39. Cf. Thiele I, pp. 182-183.

40. This letter is reproduced in Ludwig Geiger (ed.), Goethes Briefwechsel mit Wilhelm und Alexander v. Humboldt, op. cit., p. 168, and excerpted in Jürgen Wittstock, op. cit., p. 296. It was accompanied by a drawing of the original model, which—in contradistinction to the model’s current appearance, A52—includes a covered tree-stump, just as in the final marble version. See the excerpt from the letter in the table of references below. The complete letter can be read in register form on the website of the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv, by entering the name of the sender, register number 4/698, or other information.

41. Cf. Der Freymüthige, no. 87, 1803, p. 346. In addition, Kotzebue’s reference to Jason was reprinted in the Danish journal Minerva, 1803, no. 2, 23, p. 337-38. The English Literary Journal of April 16, 1804 reported a corresponding price of 800 ducats in total.

42. Bindman, op. cit., p. 136, states that the contract was formulated with unusual precision, inasmuch as (on his reading) it imposed deadlines on every stage of the work’s path to completion, so that, for example, the work was supposed to be complete on February 27, 1806. Yet this can only reflect a misinterpretation of the document. As mentioned previously, it is a much later (1821) transcript of the contract, rather than a draft antecedent to it, as Bindman assumes. Treating the document as a draft leads Bindman to interpret the dates it includes as having been specified in advance, rather than as inserted later, following the payment of each installment, as indeed must have been the case. Furthermore, in reporting the dates of each installment payment, Bindman does not follow the contract literally. This leads him to conclude that the fourth installment was paid on February 27, 1805, which was not the case; it was in fact the third installment that was paid on that date. The fourth installment can have been disbursed no earlier than following Thorvaldsen’s receipt of the letter dated April 8, 1806 from Patrick Moir—in which Moir announced that the amount could be collected at the Torlonia banking house, on the basis of Hope’s and Moir’s optimistic expectation that Jason was ready for shipment to England—and most likely not until the period 1819-1829 (more on this below). What is more, the receipt that is appended to the contract and dated February 27, 1805 also refers explicitly to the payment of the third installment: per la terza Rata.

43. The model was, however, altered by Thorvaldsen himself in the 1830s; so the extant model does not have precisely the same composition as the one Hope fell for in 1803.

44. I.e., Roman palmi at 22.3 cm each. On this see also the separate Related Article on past Weights and Measures.

45. This corresponds to 1,320 Roman scudi. On this see also the separate Related Article on past Monetary Units.

46. There are numerous examples of such lacunae, even in original documents held by the Archive. See, e.g., the letter dated May 1821 from G. R. Torlonia to Thorvaldsen, or the letter from C. F. F. Stanley to Thorvaldsen dated November 13, 1804.

47. On this see Hope’s letter dated 6.4.1819, where Hope writes that he had commissioned the marble Jason as a version of the plaster model he had seen in Thorvaldsen’s workshop.

48. For more on Thorvaldsen’s studio practice, see the separate Related Article on the subject.

49. 1 piaster was approximately equal to 1 scudo, though the former was slightly more valuable. On this see also the Related Article on Monetary Units.

50. Many thanks to cand.mag. Karen Ascani for her referral to and transcription of this letter, which will be published in her forthcoming edition of Georg Zoëga’s correspondence.

51. With respect to the formulation “waiting for” or “awaiting” in this context, see also C. F. F. Stanley’s letter to Thorvaldsen, dated 7.9.1805, about the rough-hewn statues in the sculptor’s workshop: “These will soon await your polishing.”

52. On this see also Stig Miss, op. cit., p. 14, who was the first to draw this conclusion.

53. Pauline Dorothea Frisch, née Tutein, in Reise durch Deutschland, Holland, Frankreich, die Schweitz und Italien in den Jahren 1797, 1803 und 1804, Altona 1816, p. 363.

54. Cf. The Literary Journal, vol. 3, no. 7 (April 16, 1804).

55. Cf. Thiele I, pp. 244-245.

56. Beyond his first two payments to Finelli and Keller, mentioned previously, Thorvaldsen made three further payments on March 8, 1805; May 2, 1806; and June 26, 1806 (cf. the receipts appended to the contract itself) as well as 17 weekly payments from September 13, 1806 to January 3, 1807 (cf. Finelli’s weekly receipts).

57. Cf. also Thiele 1831, p. 51.

58. Namely, those keyed to the arrival of the marble block and to the preliminary sculpting of the statue.

59. Cf. the separate Related Article about Thorvaldsen’s Illness 1803-04, along with Thiele I, p. 191.

60. Cf. the draft letter from Thorvaldsen til Gotskalk Thorvaldsen, dating to the end of February 1804, and the letter from Thorvaldsen to Nicolai Abildgaard dated 25.2.1804.

61. Cf., e.g., the letter from Thorvaldsen to the Academy dated 6.8.1804, along with the letter from Thorvaldsen to Nicolai Abildgaard dated 6.8.1804.

62. Cf. the letter from Luigi Formenti to Thorvaldsen dated 12.6.1803, the letter from C. F. F. Stanley to Thorvaldsen dated 27.9.1803 (though here Stanley simply states that Thorvaldsen “went to the country,” without specifying why), as well as Thiele I, p. 195. See also the Chronology.

63. Albano, in the mountains just 25 km southeast of Rome, was a favorite refuge of well-to-do Romans in the warm summer months. The Roman air was regarded as decidedly unsafe—for another example of this, see, e.g., the letter from Stanley dated Steptember 27, 1803. This bad air, called aria cattiva in Italian, is also mentioned by Thiele at Thiele I, p. 109, and II, p. 29, as a problem that Thorvaldsen solved by leaving Rome in the summer months.
    This phenomenon is described by the author Karl Viktor von Bonstetten in Reise in die klassichen Gegenden Roms, zur Schilderung ihres ehemaligen und gegenwärtigen Zustandes, vol. 2, Leipzig 1805, pp. 7-11, as cattiva aria. Concerning the area in Rome when Thorvaldsen lived and worked, Bonstetten writes as follows: Im Jahr 1775 hielt man die Höhen von Trinita del monte frey von dem Einfluss der ungesunden Luft; im Jahr 1802 nicht mehr. The general assumption was that the unhealthy air was due to warm winds from the Pontine Marshes, which brought a larger number of malaria-bearing mosquitoes with them.

64. For more on Thorvaldsen’s illness, see the separate Related Article on the subject.

65. Cf. the letter to Herman Schubart dated approximately 1.2.1804.

66. According to Prof. Franco Turchi, visual artist and leader of the Laboratory for Construction at the Academy of Fine Arts, it is common practice to humidify marble before starting to carve it, in order to minimize disturbance from stone dust. This strongly suggests that it was not out of concern for his materials that Thorvaldsen did not dare to work in his humid workshop.

67. For a sense of how much correspondence went missing in the mails of the day, see the list of Letters Lost, which catalogues the letters that are no longer extant today. Beyond these, there are undoubtedly numerous other lost letters of which no records remain of their being posted. Nevertheless, this should not be taken as implying that Thorvaldsen actually did attempt to mail Hope any letters prior to 1819.

68. Cf. A., “Thorvaldsen,” in S. Soldin, Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn [Latest Portrait of Copenhagen], vol. 17, no. 18 (February 29), Copenhagen 1820, pp. 173-176. A. Andersen Feldborg cites this article nearly word for word in his book Denmark Delineated, op. cit.

69. For references by contemporaries to Thorvaldsen as a Phidias or Praxiteles, see the separate Related Article on the subject.

70. Lit. “arms yielded to togas,” i.e., soldiers now wore togas, which in the Roman Empire were worn only in peacetime; in other words, peace had broken out. Cf. J. Th. Jensen and M. J. Goldschmidt, Latinsk-dansk Ordbog [Latin-Danish Dictionary], Copenhagen 1949, p. 752.

71. Cf. the letter dated 9.7.1819.

72. Cf. Thiele II, p. 440.

73. Cf. Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts, no. 44, 1819-1823, p. 187; see also the summary of these accounts for 1820-21 in the table of references relevant to the production of Jason, A822, below.

74. As mentioned previously, this transcript is now our only source for determining the precise contents of the original contract. Hope and Thorvaldsen each had a copy of the contract, but neither of those originals is extant today. The transcript can be read in its entirety here.

75. For the Italian text of the full letter, see here.

76. Namely, the Danish archaeologist P. O. Brøndsted.

77. See the particular sources from Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts collected in the table of references, below, to the sculptor’s work on Jason with the Golden Fleece, A822, in the years 1820-1821, 1824, 1825, og 1827.

78. Cf. Thiele III, p. 198.

79. See the particular sources from Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts collected in the table of references, below, to the sculptor’s work on Jason with the Golden Fleece, A822, in the years 1820-1821, 1824, 1825, og 1827.

80. It should be borne in mind that this number covers scudi from the period 1820 to 1827 indiscriminately, without taking into account changes in the currency’s value. Nor has this number been normalized to the value of a scudo in 1803, the year that Thorvaldsen had entered into his original contracts with both Hope and Finelli & Keller.

81. Cf. the letter dated 8.1.1829 from Friis to Thiele, item 22.

82. Namely, the commissioned portrait busts of Hope and his family: Thomas Hope, A823, Louisa Hope, A824, and his sons Henry Thomas Hope, A825, and Adrian John Hope, A826.

83. The two reliefs that Thorvaldsen presented to Hope as gifts were A Genio Lumen (The Genius of Art and Light), A828, and Cupid Received by Anacreon, Winter, A827. A further part of the gift, it seems, is that the sculptor had made a new, more timely bust of Hope’s eldest son Henry Thomas Hope, A825, who had visited Rome at approximately the age of 14; cf. Sass, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 296-300.

84. The two reliefs that Thorvaldsen had presented to Hope as gifts were later acquired via the English art market, and remain in the Thorvaldsens Museum collections today: A Genio Lumen (The Genius of Art and Light), A828, and Cupid Received by Anacreon, Winter, A827. For more on both of these works, the auction of Hope’s collection, and the works’ transportation to Denmark and installment at the Museum, see Floryan, op. cit., pp. 62-65.

85. Cf. Harald Tesan: Thorvaldsen und seine Bildhauerschule in Rom, Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna 1998, p. 199.

86. This is known from a letter from Bonstetten to Brun dated August 1, 1803. Cf. Bonstetten, Briefe von Karl Viktor von Bonstetten an Friederike Brun, op. cit., vol. I, p. 140, where Bonstetten relates that he had visited Keller’s parents in Switzerland, and that Keller was being tended to by his wife Clementina, née Tosetti.

87. Louis Bobé writes in Frederikke Brun, op. cit., p. 184, that Keller “pointed” Jason, i.e., carved the statue into its basic form; but this should simply be understood as meaning that Keller worked on this task together with Finelli, but soon thereafter, as mentioned previously, had to withdraw. For more on Thorvaldsen’s studio practice, see the separate Related Article on the subject.

88. Cf. Thiele I, pp. 191-192.

89. Cf. Thiele I, p. 244.

90. For more on this, see the separate Related Article on Thorvaldsen’s Illness 1803-04.

91. Cf. Christian Blangstrup (ed.), Salmonsens Konversations Leksikon, Copenhagen 1923, vol. XIV, pp. 471-72.

92. Cf. Thiele 1831, p. 51: “Thorvaldsen, who realized that, because of these circumstances, he would not be able to ship Jason in the next few years, even if was complete, accordingly let this task give way to newer commissions, as he moreover believed he had reason to fear unpleasantnesses, were it to be discovered that he was occupied with English property.” Cf. also Thiele II, p. 55: “Moreover, Mr. Moir had, on Hope’s instructions, apprised our artist that shipping Jason could pose difficulties for him, as it was English property; hence if it was to be shipped, it should be sent under the Danish flag and to Copenhagen, and sent on from there to London when the occasion permitted it. Our artist took this into consideration, and accordingly found it most prudent to let Jason remain in place, as a kind of contraband.”

93. For example, the historical painter J. L. Lund, a friend of Thorvaldsen’s, had lost his first large historical painting in 1807, when it was confiscated by the English on its return trip to Denmark. For further details, see the letter from Lund dated 11.8.1804 and the explanatory note on Lund’s Malerie [painting].

94. Cf. Thiele II, p. 54, og Thiele 1831, pp. 50-51.

95. Cf. Thiele 1831, note 94, p. 159.

96. Cf. Molbech’s Reise giennem en Deel af Tydskland, Frankrige, England og Italien i Aarene 1819 og 1820 [Journey Through Part of Germany, France, England, and Italy in the Years 1819 and 1820], op. cit, and Andersen Feldborgs Denmark Delineated, 1823, op. cit., p. xx.
    Feldborg gave Thorvaldsen a copy of the first edition of his book, which is dedicated to Thorvaldsen; it remains in Thorvaldsen’s personal library, M652, which also contains the 1824 edition, vol. I-III, M653, of Feldborg’s work.

97. Cf. A., “Thorvaldsen,” in S. Soldin, Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn [Latest Portrait of Copenhagen], vol. 17, no. 18 (February 29), Copenhagen 1820, pp. 173-176.

98. See Thorvaldsen’s letter to Herman Schubart dated 6.6.1807.

99. Cf. J. B. Dalhoff, op. cit., p. 222.

100. See the curator’s notes in the inventory records (Arkkatalog) of Thorvaldsens Museum.

101. The letter was published in Vilhelm Wanscher (ed.), Artes: Monuments et Mémoires, vol. I, Copenhagen 1932, pp. 176-77.

102. Among other differences, the tree stump lacks the cloth that is draped over it in Hope’s marble version, A822; the lance is significantly longer, the sword is angled further out from the body, and the pubic hair is missing.

103. This marble version of the statue was formerly included in the Thorvaldsen Museum’s inventory as A51, but was removed the collection in 1938; on this cf. below.

104. For examples of this, see Friederike Brun’s poem Thorwaldsons Jason, or Canova’s declaration upon seeing Jason for the first time, listed in the table of references below: Quest’ opera di quel giovane danese è fatto in uno stilo nuovo e grandioso!; cf. e.g., Thiele I, p. 181.

105. Although its exact motif or subject is not specified, this mention of a “marble statue” most likely refers to Thorvaldsen’s original, life-size Jason with the Golden Fleece. For more on this, see the article above.

106. These protocols are held in The Danish National Archives, Kunstakademiets arkiv, Akademiforsamlingen.

107. Cited following Walser-Wilhelm, op. cit., vol. IX/_I, p. 411: “…Our countryman Thorwaldsen—a resolute genius for sculpting heroes—his Jason, of which he had completed a model of one-and-a-half times life-size, [and which] he had once destroyed, because it was too large for kiln-baking [and because] he had no money to have it cast—this he now rebuilt in 4 days—full of spirit, force, and motion—a beautiful head, hair [and] ears, standing firm on its feet (which “Canova’s” heroes never do, [and] the new ones only rarely)…” This translation follows the Danish translation of Louis Bobé in Frederikke Brun, født Münter, og hendes Kreds hjemme og ude [Frederikke Brun, née Münter, and Her Circle at Home and About], Copenhagen 1910, p. 184.

108. Friederike Brun must have been mistaken with respect to the size of the first clay model, which she here represents as having been in one-and-a-half life size; see the article above, in which Thorvaldsen’s own statements are cited to the effect that the first clay model was produced in natural size, i.e., life size.

109. Cited following Walser-Wilhelm og Heinz Graber, op. cit., vol. IX/I, p. 442. The diary entry was reproduced in edited form in Friederike Brun, née Münter, “Noget om den danske Billedhugger i Rom: Albert Thorvaldsen” [Something About the Danish Sculptor in Rome: Albert Thorvaldsen], Athene IV, 1815, p. 15; previously published in German in Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, 1812, nos. 191-93 and 197-198.

110. This diary entry was reproduced in Friederike Brun, née Münter, “Noget om den danske Billedhugger i Rom: Albert Thorvaldsen” [Something About the Danish Sculptor in Rome: Albert Thorvaldsen], Athene IV, 1815, p. 15; it had earlier been published in German in Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, 1812, nos. 191-193 and 197-198. These published texts were revised versions of the original diary entry; cf. also the previous entry in this table.

111. Cited following Ludwig Geiger (ed.), Goethes Briefwechsel mit Wilhelm und Alexander v. Humboldt, Berlin 1909, p. 154.
     This letter is also reproduced in J. Wittstock, op. cit., p. 309.

112. Cf. Walser-Wilhelm and Heinz Graber, op. cit., vol. IX/I, p. 463.

113. Brun is presumably referring to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Torquato Tasso: Ein Schauspiel, Act III: “Die Schöne Last aus deinen teuren Händen / Empfang ich knieend auf mein schwaches Haupt.” The full text of the play is available here. That Goethe’s play had gone unread is a clear reference to the myth of Thorvaldsen as a diamond in the rough, who despite his common origin had succeeded in scaling the very pinnacle of high culture by dint of sheer artistic soul. For more on this, see the Related Article on Thorvaldsen’s Education.

114. Cf. Brun, Römisches Leben, op. cit., vol. II, p. 100.

115. Namely, Thomas Hope, who by commissioning Jason with the Golden Fleece, A822, made it possible for Thorvaldsen to prolong his stay in Rome. On this see the separate Related Article on A Free Man. Thorvaldsen’s Continuance in Rome.

116. This letter is reproduced in Ludwig Geiger (ed.), Goethes Briefwechsel mit Wilhelm und Alexander v. Humboldt, op. cit., p. 168, and excerpted in Jürgen Wittstock, op. cit., p. 296. It was accompanied by a drawing of the original model, which—in contradistinction to the model’s current appearance, A52—includes a covered tree-stump, just as in the final marble version. The complete letter can be read in register form on the website of the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv, by entering the name of the sender, register number 4/698, or other information.

117. The drawing Skizze zum Jason, 1803, is reproduced in Jürgen Wittstock, “Thorvaldsen und die Deutschen: Ein Beitrag zur frühen Rezeption seiner Kunst,” in Gerhard Bott og Heinz Spielmann (ed.), Künstlerleben in Rom: Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844): Der dänische Bildhauer und seine deutschen Freunde, Nürnberg 1991, p. 204.
     This drawing of the original model, in which the tree trunk is—as in the marble version—draped with a cloth, is now in the collection of the Klassisk Stiftung Weimar (formerly the Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten der Klassischen Deutschen Literatur).

118. Cf. Fernow, op. cit., pp. 313-15.

119. Cf. August von Kotzebue, in Der Freymuthige, no. 87, 1803, p. 346.

120. Knud Lyne Rahbek: ‘Bidrag til Litteraturartiklen’, in: Minerva 1803, nr. 2. 23, p. 337.

121. 1801 is a printing error for 1803. Cf. the ensuing content, which concerns Hope’s March 1803 commission.

122. Cf. Bonstetten, Briefe von Karl Viktor von Bonstetten an Friederike Brun, op. cit., vol. I, p. 159.

123. It has not yet been possible to locate such an article in a French newspaper, and so it is uncertain whether any such article ever existed. More fundamentally, it is impossible to tell whether Bonstetten is inquiring about a specific article, or merely asking whether the French reception of Thorvaldsen’s Jason has been positive in general.

124. Cf. Brun, “Thorwaldsens Jason,” in Der neue Teutsche Merkur 1803, vol. 3, pp. 485-486.

125. The epigrams read as follows:
     

     Thorwaldsons Jason.
     

     Die Fremde.
     Trau ich dem staunenden Blick,
     ist’s Wahrheit was mir erscheint?
     Ist gefüllt zwischen mir und der Antike die Klüft?
     Hat der Heroen Geschlecht der Jahrtausende
     Gräber gesprenget?
     Wandelt es hehr und voll Kraft wieder
     auf Erden umher?
     

     Die Antike.
     

     Aus der Vergessenheit Nacht rief mich
     des Genius Stimme,
     Und ich gehorchte dem Ruf still sich
     entfältender Kraft;
     Einfalt des Geistes, die Eines nur will,
     und Fülle des Herzens
     Schafft des Unmögliche selbst in
     der entarteten Kunst

     Cf. Friederike Brun, née Münter, “Thorwaldsons Jason,” in Der neue Teutsche Merkur 1803, vol. 3, pp. 485-486 (see also uni-bielefeld); also reproduced in J. G. Jacobi (ed.), Iris. Ein Taschenbuch für 1804, Zürich [1804], pp. 287-288. In the Zürich edition, however, the final word Kunst [art] is replaced by Brust [breast].

126. Cf. Thiele I, p. 181.

127. Thorwaldsends Werkstätte war etwas von dem ersten was wir besahen. Mit rücksicht auf das, was dieser Mann schon geliefert hat, glaube ich dass er ein vorzüglicher Arbeiter in seiner Kunst werden muss. Seine Bescheidenheit scheint dafür Bürge zu seyn. Ein Basrelief, wo Achilles seinen Schmerz darüber ausdrückt, dass er die Geliebte Briseis von sich entfernen muss, welche sein Freund Patroklus den Abgesandten, die sie abzuholen kommen, übergiebt, ist mit vieler Wahrheit und Delikatesse ausgedrückt. Schade, wenn er diese Composition nicht in Marmor ausführen sollte. Sein Jason eilt seiner Vollendung in Marmor entgegen.

128. See here for Kotzebue’s specific mention of Jason with the Golden Fleece, A52.

129. This refers to the poet August von Kotzebue’s Erinnerungen von einer Riese aus Liefland nach Rom und Neapel, vol. II, Berlin 1805, pp. 410-411.

130. The author behind this initial has not yet been identified. A. Andersen Feldborg cites this article almost word-for-word in his book Danmark delineated, op. cit. (pp. xix-xx in the 1823 edition, and pp. 19-21 in the 1824 edition).

131. Cf. S. Soldin, Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn [Latest Portrait of Copenhagen], vol. 17, no. 18 (February 29) Copenhagen 1820, pp. 173-176.

132. Lit. “arms yielded to togas,” i.e., soldiers now wore togas, which in the Roman Empire were worn only in peacetime; in other words, peace had broken out. Cf. J. Th. Jensen and M. J. Goldschmidt, Latinsk-dansk Ordbog [Latin-Danish Dictionary], Copenhagen 1949, p. 752.

133. Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts, no. 44, 1819-1823, p. 187. The Thorvaldsens Museum Archives.

134. Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts, no. 45, 1823-1828, p. 11. The Thorvaldsens Museum Archives.

135. Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts, no. 45, 1823-1828, p. 113. The Thorvaldsens Museum Archives.

136. Namely, the Danish archaeologist P. O. Brøndsted.

137. Thorvaldsen’s workshop accounts, no. 45, 1823-1828, p. 113. The Thorvaldsens Museum Archives.

138. This book was in Thorvaldsen’s own collection, M279.

139. No such collapse of the clay model is reported in any other extant sources. Given that Schadow’s account is highly anecdotal in general, and was published many years after these events took place, this may very well be a matter of misunderstanding—or misremembering—on Schadow’s part.

140. It has not yet been possible to locate a pronouncement by Bonstetten about Thorvaldsen’s Jason to this effect. The basis of Steinlen’s account is thus unknown. Yet Bonstetten undoubtedly saw Jason during the winter of 1802-03, presumably together with Friederike Brun, inasmuch as he makes reference to it; cf. the above excerpt from Bonstetten’s letter to Brun, dated August 25, 1803.

Last updated 18.04.2017