Portrait of the Sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen 1831

Orest Kiprensky painted this portrait of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in oil on canvas. It captures the Danish artist at a moment when the visual arts were gaining social and cultural prestige throughout Europe. The early nineteenth century saw a massive expansion in public art institutions, such as museums and academies. Art became increasingly understood as a means of forging national identity and expressing civic values. The neoclassical style and subject matter seen in Thorvaldsen's work were often promoted by these institutions as a universal aesthetic language. Kiprensky, who was Russian, was part of a generation of artists who travelled to Italy to study the classical tradition. His portrait suggests an artistic network that transcended national borders. To understand this work more fully, one could investigate the institutional history of art academies in both Russia and Denmark, as well as the patronage systems that supported artists like Thorvaldsen. This is how we can better understand the social conditions that shaped artistic production in this period.