Nicolai Eigtved

Nicolai Eigtved, also known as Niels Eigtved, (4 June or 22 June 1701 – 7 June 1754), Danish architect, introduced and was the leading proponent of the French rococo style in Danish architecture during the 1730s–1740s. He designed and built some of the most prominent buildings of his time, a number of which still stand to this day. He also played an important role in the establishment of the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi), and was its first native-born leader.

He was born Niels Madsen on the farm in Egtved village in Skjoldenæsholms Birk on the island of Zealand, Denmark to Mads Nielsen and Dorthe Hansdatter. He was trained locally as a gardener, and was promoted to a position at the Frederiksberg Palace Gardens ca. 1720.

July 1723 he got an opportunity to travel out of the country as a royal gardening apprentice. He travelled to Berlin and Dresden, among other places in Germany, earned his keep with jobs as a gardener, and learned to speak German.

From 1725 he lived in Warsaw, Poland, where he caught the attention of German architect and draughtsman Colonel Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, for whom he worked for several years. Pöppelmann was connected to the Saxon-Polish court under Frederick Augustus I, and got him a position as second lieutenant in the Saxon-Polish Engineer Corps.

Eigtved had the luck to come into a rich architectural environment, which was influenced by the presence of French immigrants such as Jean de Bodt and Zacharias Longuelune. Some of Pöppelmann’s assignments in those years, on which Eigtved would have probably participated, were the Augustus Bridge (Augustusbruecke) in Dresden (1728), the extension of the Japanese Palace in Dresden (1727), drafts for the three-king church in Dresden new city (1723–1739), and a new large lock for the Saxon dynasty (c. 1730).

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