(Karl Albert) Bertel Thorvaldsen (19 November 1770 – 24 March 1844) was a Danish sculptor of international fame, who spent most of his life in Italy (from 1789 – 1838). Born in Copenhagen into a Danish/Icelandic family of humble means he was accepted to the Royal Academy of Arts when he was eleven years old. Working part time with his father who was a wood carver he won many honors and medals at the academy and was awarded a stipend to travel to Rome and continue his education. In Rome he quickly made a name for himself as a sculptor. Maintaining a large workshop in Rome, he worked in a heroic neo-classicist style and had patrons all over Europe. Upon his return to Denmark in 1838 he was received as a national hero and a museum, Thorvaldsens Museum, was erected to house his works next to Christiansborg Palace. Thorvaldsen himself is buried within the courtyard of the museum.

In his time he was seen as the successor of master sculptor Antonio Canova, but his strict adherence to classical norms has tended to estrange modern audiences. Among his famous works is a statute of Jason the Argonaut, a figure of Christ, and the tomb monument of Pope Pius VII, the only work by a non-italian to be located in the St. Peter's Basilica, the statues of Nicolaus Copernicus and Jozef Poniatowski in Warsaw, and of Maximilian I in Munich.

Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen in 1770 (according to some accounts, in 1768), the son of Gottskálk Þorvaldsson, an Icelander who had settled in Denmark and there carried on the trade of a wood carver at a ship yard. He made decorative carvings for large ships and was the early source of influence on Thorvaldsen's development as a sculptor and on his choice of career. Thorvaldsens mother was Karen Grønlund, a Jutlandic peasant girl. His birth certificate and baptismal records have never been found, and the only record is of his confirmation in 1887. This account is disputed by some Icelanders, who claim Thorvaldsen was born in Iceland. Thorvaldsen had claimed descent from Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first European born in America. Thorvaldsen's childhood in Copenhagen was humble as his father didn't shine in his profession, but rather had a habit of drinking. Nothing is known of Thorvaldsen's early schooling, and he may in fact have been entirely schooled only at home. In any case he never became good at writing, and he never acquired much of the knowledge of fine culture that was expected from an artist.

In 1781, by the help of some friends, eleven year old Thorvaldsen was admitted to Copenhagen's Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) first as draftsman, and from 1986 at the modeling school. At night he would help his father in the wood carving. Among his professors were Nicolai Abildgaard and Johannes Wiedewelt, who are both likely influences for his later neo-classicist style. At the Academy he was highly praised for his works and won all the prizes from the small Silver Medal to the large Gold Medal for a relief of St. Peter healing the crippled beggar in 1793. As a consequence, he was granted a Royal stipend, enabling him to complete his studies in Rome. Leaving Copenhagen on August 30 on the frigate Thetis, he landed in Palermo in January 1797 traveled to Napoli where he studied for a month before making his entry to Rome on 8 March 1797. Since the date of his birth had never been recorded, he celebrated this day as his "Roman birthday" for the rest of his life.

In Rome he lived at Via Sistina in front of the Spanish Steps and had his workshop in the stables of the Palazzo Barberini. He was taken under the wing of Georg Zoëga a Danish Archeologist and numismatist living in Rome. Zoëga took an interest in seeing to it that the young Thorvaldsen acquired an appreciation of the antique arts. As a frequent guest at Zoëga's house he met Anna Maria v. Uhden, born Magnani. She had worked in Zoëga's house as a maid and had married a German archeologist. She became Thorvaldsen's mistress and she left her husband in 1803. In 1813 she gave birth to a daughter, Elisa Thorvaldsen.

Thorvaldsen also studied with another Dane, Asmus Jacob Carstens whose handling of classic themes became a source of inspiration. Thorvaldsen's first success was the model for a statue of Jason, finished in 1801 it was highly praised by Antonio Canova, the most popular sculptor in the city. But the work was slow in selling and his stipend having run he planned his return to Denmark. In 1803 as he was set to leave Rome, he received the commission to execute it in marble from Thomas Hope, a wealthy English art patron. From that time Thorvaldsen's success was assured, and he did not leave Italy for sixteen years.

The Marble Jason was not finished untill 25 years later, as Thorvaldsen quickly became a busy man. Also in 1803, he started work on Achilles and Briseïs his first classically themed relief. In 1804 he finished Dance of the Muses at Helicon and a group statue of Amor and Psyche and other important early works such as Apollo, Bacchus og Ganymedes. During 1805 he had to expand his workshop and enlist the help of several assistants. These assistants undertook most of the marble cutting and the master limited himself to doing the sketches and the finishing touches. Commissioned by Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1808 and finished in 1832 a statue of Adonis is one of the few works in marble carved solely by Thorvaldsen's own hand, and at the same time it is one of the works that is closest to the antique Greek ideals.

In the spring of 1818 Thorvaldsen fell ill and during his reconvalescence he was nursed by the scottish lady miss Frances Mackenzie. Thorvaldsen proposed to her on March 29, 1819, but the engagement was cancelled after a month. Thorvaldsen had fallen in love with another woman: Fanny Caspers. Torn between Mackenzie and the mother of his daughter Thorvaldsen never succeeded in making miss Caspers his wife.

In 1819 he visited his native Denmark. Here he was commissioned to make the colossal series of statues of Christ and the twelve Apostles for the rebuilding of Vor Frue Kirke (from 1922 known as the Copenhagen Cathedral) between 1817 and 1829, after its having been destroyed in the British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807. These were executed after his return to Rome, and were not completed till 1838, when Thorvaldsen returned with his works to Denmark, being received as a hero.

Towards the end of 1843 he was prohibited from working for medical reasons; but he began to work again in january 1844. His last composition from 24 March was a sketch for a statue of the genie made by chalk on a a blackboard. At night he had dinner with his friends Adam Oehlenschläger and H.C. Andersen and he is said to have referred to the finished museum saying: "Now I can die whenever it is time, because Bindesbøll has finished my tomb." After the meal he went to the Copenhagen Royal Theatre where he died suddenly from an aneurysm. He had bequeathed a great part of his fortune for the building and endowment of a museum in Copenhagen, and left instructions to fill it with all his collection of works of art and the models for all his sculptures, a very large collection, exhibited to the greatest possible advantage. Thorvaldsen is buried in the courtyard of this museum, under a bed of roses, by his own special wish.

Thorvaldsen was an outstanding representative of the Neoclassical period in sculpture, in fact he became the foremost artist in the field after the death of Antonio Canova in 1822 and his work was often compared to that of Antonio Canova. The poses and expressions of his figures are much more stiff and formal than those of Canova's. Thorvaldsen embodied the style of classical Greek art more than the Italian artist, he believed that only through the imitation of classical art pieces, could one become a truly great artist. Motifs for his works (reliefs, statues, and busts) were drawn mostly from Greek mythology, as well as works of classic art and literature. He created portraits of important personalities, as in his statue of Pope Pius VII. Thorvaldsen's statue of Pope Pius VII is found in the Clementine Chapel in the Vatican, for which he was the only non-Italian artist to ever have been commissioned to produce a piece. Unfortunately because he was not a catholic but a Protestant, the church did not allow him to sign his work. This led to the story of Thorvaldsen sculpting his own face on to the shoulders of the Pope, however any comparison between Thorvaldsen's portrait and the sculpture will show that this is just a fanciful story built on some smaller similarities.

His works can be seen in many European countries, especially in the Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen, where his tomb is in the inner courtyard. Thorvaldsen's Lion Monument (1819) is in Lucerne, Switzerland. This monument commemorates the sacrifice of more than six hundred Swiss Guards who died defending the Tuileries during the French Revolution. The monument portrays a dying lion lying across broken symbols of the French monarchy.

Thorvaldsen produced some striking and affecting statues of historic figures, including two in Warsaw, Poland: an equestrian statue of Prince Józef Poniatowski that now stands before the Presidential Palace; and the seated Nicolaus Copernicus, before the Polish Academy of Sciences building — both located on Warsaw's Krakowskie Przedmieście. A replica of the Copernicus statue was cast in bronze and installed in 1973 on Chicago's lakefront along Solidarity Drive in the city's Museum Campus. A statue of Johannes Gutenberg by Thorvaldsen can be seen in Mainz, Germany.

Part of Thorvaldsen's work is informed by a pronounced homoerotic sensibility, traditionally encoded in European art in the myth of Zeus and Ganymede. Illustrative are his Eros, several versions of Ganymede, the Shepherd Boy with Dog, and his bas relief of Hylas and the Nymphs, depicting a shapely Hylas terrified of the nubile nymphs embracing him.

Outside Europe, Thorvaldsen is less well known. However, in 1896 an American textbook writer wrote that his statue of the resurrected Christ, commonly referred to as Thorvaldsen's Christus (created for Vor Frue Kirke), was "considered the most perfect statue of Christ in the world." The statue has appealed to the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a 3.4 m replica is on display at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. There is also a replica of this statue in the LDS Visitors' Center in Mesa, Arizona, and in the Los Angeles Temple Visitor's Center [Santa Monica] and images of the statue are used in official church media, such as the Internet site LDS.org. The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, also houses a full-size replica of the statue within its iconic dome. Thorvaldsen's Christus was recreated in Lego by parishioners of a Swedish Protestant church and unveiled on Easter Sunday 2009.

Thorvaldsen's primary mastery was his feel for the rhythm of lines and movements. Nearly all his sculptures can be viewed from whatever angle without compromise of their impact. In addition, he had the ability to work in monumental size. Thorvaldsen's classicism was strict; nevertheless his contemporaries saw his art as the ideal, although afterwards art took new directions. A bronze copy of Thorvaldsen's Self-Portrait stands in Central Park, New York, near the East 97 Street entrance.