The Thorvaldsens Museum Archives

[...] Amidst the rubbish, ruins, and fragments, which fill up the court and avenues of the palace of the Barberini, lie some of the most distinguished studii of Rome; some, I believe, occupying the very out-houses raised for the workmen who built that ponderous edifice in former ages, when the Coliseum was plundered for its erection. Among these, the work-shop of the CAVALIERE THORWALDSON is the most attractive, though the quick demand for his exquisite productions leaves but few of his works on hand. His basso-relievos are his finest efforts; particularly his splendid model of the Triumph of Alexander, bespoke by Napoleon for the facade of the Quirinal, whose own triumphs were at an end before the work was finished. The heads, and, above all, that of the conqueror himself, taken from his bust in the Capitol, are most striking. A plaster cast of this basso-relievo was put up in the Quirinal, and a copy in marble was, I believe, purchased by Monsieur Sommariva, of Paris, decidedly the most munificent patron of the arts in Europe. [...]