Adonis

When Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria ordered this Adonis from Thorvaldsen in the autumn of 1808, he was 22, and Bavaria had been a kingdom for less than three years, a rank it owed to its alliance with Napoleon. The marble was ready to ship in October 1831, and Ludwig, by then king, bought it from the artist in 1832.

In Greek myth Adonis was a beautiful young hunter loved by two goddesses, Aphrodite and Persephone, queen of the underworld, and his year was divided between them. Thorvaldsen shows him life-size and nude, his weight on one leg as he leans against a tree trunk, his left hand on his hip. The Bavarian State Painting Collections, which own the statue, read his lowered head as unease at being passed between the two goddesses year after year.

When the Glyptothek opened in 1830, works by Thorvaldsen and the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova had a place there in a room for modern sculpture. They later moved to the Neue Pinakothek, Munich's gallery of 19th-century art. That building is closed for renovation, and since the Glyptothek reopened in 2021 this Adonis has been on view here.