Thorvaldsen, Bertel
Copenhagen 1770 – 1844 Copenhagen

Alexanders des Grossen Einzug in Babylon. Marmorfries im Königlich Dänischen Schlosse Christiansburg von Bertel Thorwaldsen. Nach Zeichnun­gen von Fr. Overbeck und Andern gestochen von Samuel Amsler. Mit Erläu­terungen von Ludwig Schorn.

Munich, Verlag der literarisch-artistischen Anstalt [letterpress printed at Stuttgart, by J.G. Cotta; engravings printed at Darmstadt, by J.H. Felsing], 1835

oblong folio (375 × 580 mm), (4) ff. letterpress, unsigned (title, transcribed above; dedication to Ludwig i of Bavaria, subscribed by J.G. Cotta; descriptions of the plates in double columns num­bered 1–8); plus twenty-two plates (i–xxi showing segments, and last unnumbered plate showing the relief as a whole), of which plates xiii, xx are signed with Amsler’s monogram, and last, unnumbered plate signed Wilhelm Müller sculp Weimar (credit line on plate xiv: H. Felsing impr. Darmstadt).

Letterpress and several plates thoroughly foxed, occasional spotting elsewhere; light abrasions to the binding, headcap torn.

bound in russia leather, decorated in gilt and blind, marbled endpapers, sprinkled page edges; proba­bly by Philipp Selenka of Wiesbaden (see below).

A suite of prints reproducing Thorvaldsen’s monumental frieze of the ‘Entrance of Alexander the Great into Babylon’, engraved by Samuel Amsler (1791–1848) after drawings by Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789–1869) and anonymous draughtsmen. The accompanying text was supplied by (Johann Karl) Ludwig Schorn (1793–1842), editor of the ‘Kunst-Blatt’ and professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

Born in the village of Schinznach, near Wildegg, Canton Aargau, Amsler was successively apprenticed to the engravers Johann Heinrich Lips, in Zurich, and to Carl Hess, in Munich. In 1816 he travelled to Rome, associating there with artists of the Nazarene movement such as Koch, Cornelius, and Overbeck, though he never became a Nazarene himself. In 1817 Amsler drew and later engraved two of Thorvaldsen’s recent sculptures, the life-sized ‘Goddess of Hope’ and the ‘Shepherd Boy’.¹ Thorvaldsen was so impressed by these prints that he com­missioned from Amsler a new series of engravings of his Alexander frieze, even though it already had been engraved by Pietro Bettelini (1763–1829) and Domenico Marchetti (1780–1844).²

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Unlike Bettelini and Marchetti, Amsler based his engravings not on Thorvaldsen’s original frieze in the Palazzo Quirinale (1812), but on the third and largest version made for Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen (1818–1827), where the dimensions of the room had required Thorvaldsen to lengthen the frieze by introducing additional single figures. Amsler worked from the same drawings by Overbeck used by the Italian engravers and from supplementary drawings made by other artists especially for the purpose.³ Amsler is docu­mented in Wildegg in 1825 and 1827–1829 working on the engravings, and in Munich in 1829 he put the final touches to the last five matrices. Publication was delayed until 1835. The printer is identified at the foot of one of the pages of text: ‘Druck der Offizin der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung in Stuttgart’; one of the plates is signed: ‘H. Felsing impr. Darmstadt’.

Plates i–xxi are uncaptioned; however Schorn’s explanatory text presents them in four groups: i–vi showing the Euphrates and city walls; vii–xii, tributes of homage; xiii–xvi, Alexander, deities and followers; xvii–xxi, the train of the Macedonian army. The last, unnumbered plate provides an overview of the frieze. In some copies, Schorn’s German text is replaced (or supplemented) by French (‘Entrée d’Alexandre le Grand à Babylone’) or English (‘The Entrance of Alexander the Great into Babylon’) translation.

New editions (edited by Hermann Luecke) were published at Leipzig 1870–1882.⁴

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 Contemporary South German binding

Our binding is decorated by a set of tools associated with Philipp Selenka (1803–1850) of Wiesbaden, brother of Johann Jacob Selenka (1801–1871), Hofbuchbinder in Braunschweig.⁵

reference Charles Le Blanc, Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes (Paris 1854), i, p.9 nos. 13–33