Constantin Hansen, Gottlieb Bindesbøll, and Danish artists in Rome

A Company of Danish Artists in Rome. (In his red fez, the architect Bindesbøll lolls in the foreground.)

Carl Christian Constantin Hansen (3 November 1804, Rome – 29 March 1880, Copenhagen), one of the artists associated with the Golden Age of Danish Painting. The son of a painter, he studied under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. In 1835 he received a stipend to travel abroad for three years; he eventually spent eight years in Italy. While there, he traveled with several other Danish artists, and in 1837 the Copenhagen Art Union (Kunstforening) commissioned a painting from Hansen that commemorated the friendship of these Danish artists abroad. The painting was entitled "A Company of Danish Artists in Rome" (Et selskab af danske kunstnere i Rom), and portrayed the artist with his fellow painters Martinus Rørbye, Wilhelm Marstrand, Albert Küchler, Ditlev Blunck, Jørgen Sonne, and the architect Gottlieb Bindesbøll.

Apparently, Albert Küchler - the middle of the three men standing in the window -
painted a sketch of Hansen, so that he could use it to include himself in the group.

(Expand to view a larger size.)

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Three years later Hansen painted a portrait of his friend Bindesbøll.

Michael Gottlieb Birckner Bindesbøll (5 September 1800, Ledøje – 14 July 1856, Frederiksberg), Danish architect active during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. He is most remembered for his design of the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, and was a key figure in the stylistic shift in Danish architecture from late classicism to Historicism.