The Thorvaldsens Museum Archives

Abstract

This greeting is written in Clara Beaumarié’s album under a drawing of a winged youth playing a lyre:

Thorvaldsen seems to have taken an interest in this figure around 1843. It is similar to another Thorvaldsen drawing from the 1840s, C1160, a hovering lyre-playing Cupid, who, however, is not shown as a youth but as a small boy. There is a striking likeness to the relief Cupid’s Swan Song, cf. A456, from the same year as the greeting in the album. However, since the figure in Beaumarié’s album does not have Cupid’s quiver, it may be interpreted more broadly as the genius of Harmony as e.g. in the relief The Genii of Poetry and Harmony, cf. A528, also from 1843.

• Francis Maillard: Deaux Orléanais au XIX^e siècle, Paris 2015.
• Francis Maillard: “Madame C. Beaumarié: das Album, das Reisetagebuch und der Zufall”, Heine-Jahruch 51 (2012), pp. 86-98.