L'Assemblée constituante danoise

In October 1848 Denmark's first constituent assembly met to write the country's founding charter and bring centuries of absolute royal rule to an end. Constantin Hansen was commissioned to record that meeting more than a decade after it had happened, and he worked on this huge canvas from 1861 to 1865. Because the event was long past, he built the many portraits from old photographs, drawings, and even sculptors' busts of the men involved. Around 100 of the 154 members can still be picked out. The politician Orla Lehmann leans forward at the lower right, caught mid-gesture, and the churchman and poet Grundtvig sits at the exact point where the lines of the hall converge, so the whole room seems to gather toward his head.