Danish artwork resonates with LDS Church members

HILLEROD, DENMARK — About a mile’s walk through the streets of this picturesque and quaint little town is Frederiksborg Castle.

It’s perched in the middle of a lake, and tourists aptly describe it as the Versailles of Denmark, with its meandering gardens and majestic inside rooms.

But members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints consider this castle special for a different reason. It’s home to a series of paintings by 19th-century Danish artist Carl Bloch on the life of Christ.

Since 1955, when few images were actually used by the LDS Church in publications, these paintings have been used to illustrate more than 300 issues of the Improvement Era or the Ensign. They can also be seen in LDS meetinghouses, temples and other buildings.

A special exhibit of other artworks and altarpieces by Bloch, on display at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Provo, Utah, has been the most well-attended show the museum has had in 15 years. More than 250,000 people have come to see the artwork at the exhibit, which will soon close.

Oddly enough, in Denmark, the paintings are tucked in a small room off of the main chapel at Frederiksborg.

If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you might walk past them.

Dawn Pheysey, curator of religious art at the BYU museum, said many Danes don’t quite understand the fascination and fervor of Mormons toward Bloch, a Lutheran artist who fell out of favor toward the end of his career.

But there’s something about his work that resonates with Latter-day Saints.

“I think his figure of Christ is a figure that resonates with our beliefs about him,” Pheysey said. “It’s a very strong, masculine figure and yet a very compassionate one, all rolled into one. That seems to resonate with us and what we believe, and I think that’s one reason the church was attracted to his images of Christ.”

Another Danish artist, Bertel Thorvaldsen, has had a similar effect on members of the LDS faith with his "Christus" statue. Like the works of art by Bloch, the LDS Church began pursuing the opportunity to use this statue back in the 1950s.

A copy of the work is now on display at Temple Square in Salt Lake City and more than a dozen other locations owned by the church. The statue has almost become synonymous with the LDS Church, yet the small church in Copenhagen where the original stands is strikingly quiet when compared to the pulsating streets of this metropolitan city.