Johannes Wiedewelt

Johannes Wiedewelt (1 July 1731 – 17 December 1802), Danish neoclassical sculptor, was born in Copenhagen to royal sculptor to the Danish Court, Just Wiedewelt, and his wife Birgitte Lauridsdatter. Following in his father's footsteps, he too became a royal sculptor introducing neoclassical ideals to Denmark in the form of palace decorations, garden sculptures and artifacts and, especially, memorial monuments. He was undoubtedly the best known Danish sculptor before Bertel Thorvaldsen.

The elder Wiedewelt recognised his son's talents early, and the boy trained under the Italian history painter Hieronimo Miani, one of the two leaders of the Drawing and Painting Academy (Tegne- og Malerakademiet) in Copenhagen along with Louis August le Clerc, as early as perhaps 1744. This Academy was the precursor to the still-extant Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) established ten years later.

When Miani left Denmark in 1745 to return to Italy, the elder Wiedewelt took a stronger hand in training the boy, apprenticing him in his workshop. At the same time the young Wiedeweldt continued at the Academy, drawing under Johan Christof Petzoldt, and he presumedly also trained under royal sculptor to the Danish Court, Didrick Gercken.

He began already to produce his own works early, and had produced in Spring 1750 two small busts cast in tin of King Frederik V and Queen Louise. He was paid a reasonable sum for this work, and it encouraged him to follow his dream to study outside of Denmark.

Several months later at nineteen years of age he ventured out on a student travel that took him over Hamburg to Rouen and finally to Paris in August 1750. There he met the Danish Legation secretary to the French Court in Paris Justitsråd Joachim Wasserschlebe who would become a loyal supporter of the young sculptor.

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