HANSEN, Christian Frederik
(b. 1756, København, d. 1845, Frederiksberg)

Vor Frue Kirke, Copenhagen (interior)

1829
Engraving
National Library, Copenhagen

Christian Frederik Hansen was the main representative of Neoclassicism in Denmark. He adhered rigorously to Greek models. His first buildings were designed for Altona which, although a suburb of Hamburg today, was a separate Danish city in the 18th century. He later turned the medieval and Baroque city of Copenhagen into a Neoclassical capital. He built the town hall, court house, and prison (1803–16) and the church of Our Lady (1810–29), with its Boullée-inspired interior.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the English Royal Navy bombarded Copenhagen, and the city was extremely damaged. The buildings destroyed included the 12th-century cathedral, the Vor Frue Kirke (Church of Our Lady). Hansen presented his first designs for the reconstruction in 1808, and the building was completed in 1829. The architect positioned an antique temple frontage before a rectangular building. The triangular pediment of the façade featured a sculpted scene of Christ's Resurrection, while over this there rose a massive tower whose proportions seemed not to match those of the building itself.

The interior space was divided by rectangular piers, which were provided with niches for figures representing the apostles. A gallery with an Ionic colonnade ran above the piers, and Hansen designed the apse to accommodate a statue of Christ made by Bertel Thorvaldsen.