Nicolai AbildgaardDanish, 1743–1809Spurveskjuls facade
May one see it?
Not receiving at present
Copenhagen, Denmark
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- KKSgb4078
In the catalog
Sources
- SMK
- Image: SMK — National Gallery of Denmark — public domain
Meanwhile, in the life of Nicolai Abildgaard
The whole life11 September 1743
Born
1772
Rome rather than Paris
Although artists of the time usually went to Paris for further study, Abildgaard, whose ambitions lay in history painting, chose Rome. There he studied Annibale Carracci’s frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese and the paintings of Raphael, Titian and Michelangelo, as well as sculpture, architecture, decoration and wall painting, mythology, antiquities, anatomy and perspective.
1772–1777
Sergel and Füssli: a turn towards Romanticism
In the company of the Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and the painter Johann Heinrich Füssli, Abildgaard began to move away from academic classicism and came to love Shakespeare, Homer and Ossian. Themes from Greek and Norse mythology placed him at the forefront of Nordic Romanticism.
1778
Professor at the Academy of Art
Soon after joining the Academy Abildgaard was appointed to a professorship, teaching mythology and anatomy as well as neoclassical painting. His pupils included Asmus Jacob Carstens, the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and the painters Johan Ludvig Lund and Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.
February 1794
The Christiansborg fire destroys his canvases
The fire at Christiansborg Palace destroyed seven of the ten monumental paintings of the grand cycle. The project stopped, and with it the painter’s income.
4 June 1809
Died
