Gloria Victis!: Victors and Vanquished in French Art

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, CopenhagenWith a Beauty All Its Own "I called this collection the Glyptotek to demonstrate that it was not a museum with the usual need for scientific order and completeness, where art works often stand freezing, alien to each other in a heterogeneous mixture. No, it was to be a place 'wo Marmorbilder stehen und sehen dich an', where the statues are displayed in festivity and harmony, to grace the life of the living." (Carl Jacobsen, founder of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, June 1906). The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is an art museum of international standing situated in central Copenhagen, next to the Tivoli Gardens. It houses rich and diverse collections in its two main departments, one of which is devoted to ancient art of the Mediterranean area, the other to French and Danish art of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The museum was named after Ny Carlsberg, the brewery owned by the founder, brewer Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914). He added the word Glyptotek, "a collection of sculpture," to indicate the pride of place taken by that art form and in recognition of his debt to the older namesake, the Glyptothek in Munich. Originally one of the largest private art collections of its time, the Glyptotek was donated to the public by Carl Jacobsen by deeds of gift in 1888 and 1899. He subsequently established the New Carlsberg Foundation, in 1902, to ensure the financial well-being of the museum. Since 1954, the Glyptotek has been an independent institution supported not only by the Foundation, but by the City of Copenhagen and the Danish State as well. The collection of French sculpture presents the stars of the late nineteenth-century Parisian Salontogether with Auguste Rodin, the ground-breaking contemporary of the French Impressionists. Nowhere outside France is a comparable collection to be seen. As for the Salon, Carpeaux is particularly well represented, having a whole loggia on the "Danish" side of the building to