Carl Bloch

In the 1860s the Danish painter Carl Bloch took on a commission that would occupy him for 14 years: 23 large paintings of the life of Christ for the chapel of Frederiksborg Castle, the royal palace north of Copenhagen. He was in his early thirties, already admired at home for lively history and everyday scenes worked up during years in Rome.

The Frederiksborg cycle made his name. Bloch set the Gospel stories in plain, strongly lit rooms full of ordinary faces, Christ healing at the pool of Bethesda, the doubting Thomas reaching out a hand, all painted with a realist's attention to gesture and cloth. He went on to complete eight altarpieces for churches in Denmark and Sweden.

Bloch died in 1890, only 55. His religious pictures might have stayed a Danish affair, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints later took them up for its own teaching, and copies of his Christ now hang far from Copenhagen.