Hermann Ernst Freund

• Name — Hermann Ernst Freund • Born — 15 October 1786 • Birthplace — Uthlede, near Bremen, Holy Roman Empire • Died — 30 June 1840 • Place of death — Copenhagen, Denmark • Resting Place — Assistens Cemetery, Copenhagen • Known for — Sculpture • Training — Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts • Movement — Danish Golden Age, Neoclassicism

• Illustration — Hermann Ernst Freund portrayed by Christian Albrecht Jensen, 1835, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Freund was born in Uthlede near Bremen in the Holy Roman Empire. Originally trained as a smith, he later turned to engraving and gem carving before entering the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1805. He applied for and obtained Danish citizenship in 1811 and completed his studies with the Academy’s major travel scholarship, which enabled him to continue his training in Italy.

Freund arrived in Rome in 1818 and worked there for around ten years in Bertel Thorvaldsen’s studio, where he assisted on large sculptural commissions destined for Christiansborg and the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen. Despite the close collaboration, his own work gradually took a different direction, combining classical form with subjects drawn from Nordic myth. In Rome he modelled a series of works based on Norse deities, including statuettes of Loki (c. 1822), Odin (model 1825–1827, cast in bronze 1827) and Thor (Academy presentation piece, 1829). In 1822 he won first prize in a Copenhagen competition for compositions on Nordic mythological themes with the relief Mimir and Balder Consult the Norns, later acquired by the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. These works made Freund one of the earliest Danish sculptors to develop a systematic sculptural imagery based on Nordic mythology, which contemporary critics associated with emerging currents of romantic nationalism.

Freund returned to Copenhagen in 1828. Among the commissions he pursued on his return was an extensive frieze with scenes from the Ragnarok myth cycle, designed for the interior of Christiansborg Palace and begun while he was still in Rome. The ambitious project occupied him for many years but was not completed in his lifetime. A reduced version of the Ragnarok frieze was finally installed at Christiansborg in 1841, after Freund’s death, and completed by his pupils and colleagues Herman Wilhelm Bissen and Georg Christian Freund. The work was destroyed in the fire that consumed Christiansborg in 1884, although parts of the composition could later be reconstructed on the basis of surviving casts and drawings. A plaster cast of a section of the frieze is held by the Statens Museum for Kunst. Freund also prepared models for figures of the twelve apostles for the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, although the final commission for the church’s sculptural decoration went to Thorvaldsen.

• Illustration — Thor (1829), marble statuette • Illustration — Baptismal font in Faaborg Church • Illustration — Odin (model c. 1825–1827, bronze 1827) • Illustration — Memorial for Jens Pedersen at Sæby Church, Hornsherred (1833) • Illustration — Skæbnens gudinde (Fate), sculpture by Hermann Ernst Freund at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek