Christus (statue)

Short description: Statue by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1838)

The original white Carrara marble statue, completed in 1833, in the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark

Christus is an 1833 white Carrara marble statue of the resurrected Jesus by Bertel Thorvaldsen located in the Church of Our Lady, an Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was commissioned as part of a larger group, which includes 11 of the original 12 apostles and Paul the Apostle (instead of Judas Iscariot).

The statue has been widely reproduced; images and replicas of it were adopted by the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in the 20th century to emphasize the centrality of Jesus in its teachings.

Original sculpture

The Church of Our Lady was destroyed by fire in September 1807 from bombardment by the British Royal Navy during the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807, part of the Napoleonic Wars. When the church was being rebuilt, Thorvaldsen was commissioned in 1819 to sculpt statues of Jesus and the apostles, a baptismal font, other furnishings, and decorative elements. A plaster cast model was supplied for the church's consecration on June 7, 1829, with the finished white Carrara marble statue replacing it in November 1833.^[1] The statue is 11-foot-4-inch (3.45-meter) tall.^[2]

The inscription at the base of the sculpture reads "Kommer til mig" ("Come unto me") with a reference to the Bible verse Matthew 11:28, in which Jesus is depicted with His hands spread, displaying the wounds in the hands of His resurrected body. The original plaster cast model is on display in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Sites of replicas

Churches

Wawel Cathedral, Kraków, Poland (1833; mounted in 1835)
St. Petri Church (Church of Norway), Stavanger, Norway (1853)
Koranda Congregation Chapel (Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren), Plzeň, Czech Republic
Church of the Transfiguration of The Lord (Old Catholic Church of the Czech Republic), Varnsdorf, Czech Republic^[3]
St. John United Lutheran Church (1926; originally a Danish-speaking congregation) in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, U.S.
St. Paul's United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas, U.S.
Trinity Lutheran Church in Galesburg, Illinois, U.S. (a wood carving by Meyer in Oberammergau, Germany)
Onsta Gryta Church (Church of Sweden) in Västerås, Sweden (2009; six feet tall; 30,000 white Lego pieces)^[4]
In front of the Church of Peace, a Protestant church in Potsdam, Germany (1845–1854)
In front of the Cathedral Church of the Advent, an Episcopalian church in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.

Cemeteries

Oakwood Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas, U.S. (bronze)
Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, U.S. (1947; The Court of the Christus on Cathedral Drive)^[5]
Forest Lawn Cypress cemetery, Cypress, California, U.S. (1959; The Garden of Faith on Sunset Drive)
Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills cemetery, Hollywood Hills, California, U.S. (The Court of Remembrance)
Forest Lawn Covina Hills cemetery, Covina Hills, California, U.S.
Luisenfriedhof I cemetery, Berlin, Germany (bronze)
Luisenfriedhof III cemetery, Berlin, Germany
The Haggenmacher family tomb at the Farkasréti Cemetery, Budapest, Hungary (1919)

Hospital

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. (1896; Christus Consolator)^[6]

LDS Church use

Stephen L Richards, an apostle and first counselor to church president David O. McKay in the First Presidency, purchased a replica of the Christus the late 1950s and gifted it to the church. It was completed by the Rebechi Aldo & Gualtiero studio and made from white Carrara marble from Pietrasanta, Tuscany, Italy in April 1959. It arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah in June 1959. It was placed in the unfinished North Visitors' Center on Temple Square in Salt Lake City in 1962, and was unveiled in 1967. It is 11-foot-0.25-inch (3.36-meter) tall and weighs 12,000 pounds. In preparation for the demolition of the North Visitors’ Center, the replica was removed in November 2021 and placed in storage for conservation. Its final home has not yet been disclosed. In December 2019, another replica (8-foot-tall) was placed across the street in the Conference Center.

A second Christus replica was sculpted by the Rebechi Aldo & Gualtiero studio in to be displayed in the LDS Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. It was an exact duplicate of the Salt Lake City replica being 11-foot-0.25-inch (3.36-meter) tall and weighing 12,000 pounds. Its display "was intended to help visitors understand that Latter-day Saints are Christians".^[7] After the World's Fair ended on October 17, 1965, the replica was shipped from New York to the Los Angeles California Temple visitors' center on November 21, 1966.

The church commissioned the Rebechi Aldo & Gualtiero studio to sculpt a third replica of the Christus statue for the Expo 1970 in Osaka , Japan. It was 9’6” tall and weighed 10,000-11,000 pounds. After the expo ended on September 13, 1970, it was stored in a warehouse in Japan for six years. It was then shipped from Japan to New Zealand in March 1977. The renovated Hamilton New Zealand Temple visitors' center reopened with it inside on August 4, 1977.

Since then, the church has created replicas of the statue and displayed them in temple visitors' centers at the Laie Hawaii, Mexico City Mexico, Washington D.C., Oakland California, St. George Utah, Idaho Falls Idaho, Nauvoo Illinois, Palmyra New York, London England, Portland Oregon, Paris France, São Paulo Brazil, Provo City Center,^[7]^[8] and Rome Italy temples, with the statue in Rome also accompanied by replicas of Thorvaldsen's twelve apostles.^[9]

Replicas are also displayed in the visitors' centers in Nauvoo, Illinois, the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, New York, and Independence, Missouri. Other replicas are displayed in the church's meetinghouses in Hyde Park in London, Garðabær, Iceland (2000), and Copenhagen, Denmark.

On April 4, 2020, church president Russell M. Nelson announced a new symbol for the church, featuring an image of the Christus as the central element, placed above the church's name.^[10] The church uses the image on its webpages and in other official publications.^[8]

Image gallery

The original plaster cast model of Christus (1822) by Thorvaldsen in Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark
Marble replica (1959) in the North Visitors' Center on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. This facility was demolished in November 2021.
Replica (1896) in the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Bronze replica in the Luisenfriedhof I Cemetery in Berlin, Germany
Replica in the Luisenfriedhof III Cemetery in Berlin, Germany
Replica at the Haggenmacher family tomb at the Farkasréti Cemetery in Budapest, Hungary (1916)
Replica in front of the Church of Peace (Protestant) in Potsdam, Germany (1845-1854)
Replica in the St. Petri Church (Church of Norway) in Stavanger, Norway (1853)
Bronze replica in the Oakwood Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas, U.S.