The marble sculpture of Ebe was made by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in 1806, and is now kept at the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, the museum dedicated to the great neoclassical artist. Thorvaldsen, for this creation, proved to be inspired by Antonio Canova, with whom he found himself in "competition" during his long stay in Italy (1789-1838).
Thorvaldsen was particularly neoclassical, more severe than Canova: so, if sometimes the works of Antonio Canova "abandoned" itself to sensuality, those of Thorvaldsen remained one hundred percent adherent to the dictates of neoclassicism. The dictates according to which the work of art should not emotionally involve the observer, but had to involve it intellectually because the subjects of the works had to be idealized, formal, rational (this as an answer to the excess and the exuberance of Baroque art that had characterized the previous years).
Here it depicts the statue of Ebe formally frontal, drawing direct suggestions from ancient Greek art, which Bertel Thorvaldsen knew deeply. Hebe, daughter of Zeus and Hera, according to Greek mythology was the maid of the gods of Olympus, goddess of youth and beauty.
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