Thorvaldsen Medal
Awarded for contribution to the visual arts

The Thorvaldsen Medal (Danish: Thorvaldsens Medalje, Thorvaldsen Medaillen) is awarded annually with few exceptions to a varying number of recipients by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and is its highest distinction within the visual arts. It is named after the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.
The medal was founded in 1837 as the Exhibition Medal and awarded for talented works in the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition in the Charlottenborg Palace. In 1866, it was renamed the Thorvaldsen Exhibition Medal (Danish: Thorvaldsenske Udstillings-Medaille), and from 1923 it has been known under its current name.
Medal design
The medal is executed in silver and designed by the sculptor Christen Christensen (1806–1845) in connection with Thorvaldsen's homecoming from Rome in 1838.
“Thorvaldsen Medal” enters the record as awarded for contribution to the visual arts. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thorvaldsen, Medal and Awarded can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thorvaldsen Medal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.