The Ephesian Artemis in early 19th-c. Denmark

I previously noted the tomb of P.C. Abildgaard that was erected in 1801 in Copenhagen’s Assistens Kirkegård. A prominent relief on this tomb depicts the Ephesian Artemis, looking somewhat out of place in a Danish cemetery. Yet the motif was certainly chosen for this context because of the powerful meaning it had acquired since the […]

The Classical Imagination of a Small Town: Aarhus 1909

I have been working on the geographies of classicism – especially the receptions of classical heritage in the context of Aarhus, a provincial, small Danish town that saw its fortune grow considerably from the late 19th century onwards. Around the turn of the century, the city’s architects occasionally (and sometimes quite fleetingly) looked back to […]

Hack Kampmann’s Antiquity

Hack Kampmann (1856-1920) is one of the most renowned Danish pre-modernist architects. He entered the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1873, and was later responsible for designing several celebrated buildings in Aarhus, including Toldkammeret (1895), the theatre (1900) and the old State Library (1902). The Danish Art Library has made some fantastic scans […]

Cemetery Classicisms in Copenhagen

Last week I explored classical heritage in the context of a crematorium in a 20th-century cemetery in Aarhus. This post presents a few comparative examples of classical heritage from Copenhagen’s Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro neighbourhood. The one above is one of my favourites: the tombstone of Peter Christian Abildgaard (1740-1801). The inscription lists his […]

The “Mausoleum” of Nordre Kirkegård, III: The End

To conclude this little series on the “Mausolleion” of Nordre Kirkegård, here are some images taken in July 1946 during the demolition of the crematorium (part one, part two). The first image shows demolition in progress – with two workers on top of the pyramid – and gives some more detail of the relief decoration […]

The “Mausoleum” of Nordre Kirkegård, II: Drawings

Following up on yesterday’s post, here are Kühnel’s beautiful 1918 drawings of the crematorium that he designed for Nordre Kirkegård in Aarhus and that stood for little more than 20 years. The drawings are easily available from the municipality’s “Min Ejendom” archive (in the entry for Kirkegårdsvej 26). The image of Kühnel below is from […]

The “Mausoleum” of Nordre Kirkegård, Aarhus

The Maussolleion of Halikanassos – and especially its stepped, pyramidal roof – has inspired all sorts of public architecture in the modern world. Buildings from London to Los Angeles and Melbourne have thus been part of a global discourse of classicism rooted in this (lost) wonder of the ancient world. A well-known Danish example is […]

“Possibly the world’s finest Greek portrait”: Demosthenes – from Knole to Copenhagen

Among the most famous sculptures in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is the portrait statue of Demosthenes (inv. 2782; Arachne entry with some further bibliography). The statue is reported to have been found in Campania, where it was once part of the collection of a palazzo in central Naples. In 1770, it then made its way […]

Julius Lange: A (Classical) Art Historian in a Small Country

In the little volume, Classical Heritage and European Identities: The Imagined Geographies of Danish Classicism (2019), we presented a brief history of Danish classical archaeology. Our main focus was fieldwork and especially the excavations at Bodrum (ancient Halikarnassos), so much was obviously left out. An important figure that we didn’t cover was Julius Lange (1838-96), […]