N.A. Abildgaards kobberstik til Johs. Ewalds »Lykkens Tempel«

Resumé

In Danish history of art Nicolai Abildgaard’s drawing and Johann Friderich Clemens’ ensuing engraving from 1780 illustrating Johannes Ewald’s allegoric fable ’The Temple of Fortune’ (1764) in volume I of his Collected Writings have mainly been treated as forerunners of Abildgaard's more independent and more personal painting on af fire screen from about 1785, called »Templum Fortunae«. However, a close examination of the engraving demonstrates that all individualized characters depicted can be found somewhere in Ewald’s text. Abildgaard chose to concentrate on a group of people who had resolved to give up any ambitions of advancing themselves in worldly affairs but who also were unable to believe in eternal life after death. Abildgaard appears deliberately to have disregarded the idealistic and maybe even religious moral of Ewald’s story. Where Ewald found those losers to be either fatalistically indifferent or unrestrained to the point of half madness and therefore only gave them attention in passing, Abildgaard showed them to be determined, stable and almost dignified, thus heralding a modern humanism which was only to emerge and gain ground later in the nineteenth century.