Om Carl Th. Dreyer's Thorvaldsens kunst

Summary In the autumn of 1947 the Board of Danish Culture Film (Managing Director Ib Koch‐Olsen) agreed to a proposal by Carl Th. Dreyer to produce a shortfilm on Bertel Thorvaldsen. Supervised by the counsellor of the Thorvaldsen Museum, Sigurd Schultz, Dreyer worked out a manuscript as well: The Art of Thorvaldsen as an instruction for the filming. In the Dreyer Archives of the Danish Film Museum we can find his preliminary, meticulous texts on the artists most wellknown works in the Thorvaldsen Museum: the statues of Christ and the apostles for the Cathedral Vor Frue Kirke in Copenhagen. During the months of August and September 1948 the filming took place at the Thorvaldsen Museum. The statues of Venus (Fig. 7), Merkur (Fig. 9), Hebe (Fig. 5) and Amor and Psyche (Fig. 6) were moved out into the great hall, where they were placed on a turntable plinth with a grey drapery as a background, and floodlighted (Fig. 3). In this way they were surrounded by open air, which increased the plastic effect. Just li...