COPENHAGEN.- When SMK (The National Gallery of Denmark) welcomes visitors to a new major exhibition featuring Danish artist Carl Bloch (1834–1890) in February 2023, the show will include a very special painting: Bloch’s Prometheus Unbound.

Measuring four by three metres, the painting was commissioned in 1864 by the newly appointed king of Greece. Before the painting was delivered to Athens, it was exhibited at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. Here, it was greeted with huge enthusiasm, and Bloch was proclaimed the greatest artist ever to arise out of Denmark. After the exhibition, the painting was shipped to Athens and hung in the stairwell of the royal palace.

In 1932, Prometheus Unbound was brought back to Denmark to once again be shown at an exhibition at Charlottenborg. By this time, however, Bloch no longer enjoyed the same popularity – his works were now considered ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘sentimental’, and during the years that followed Bloch gradually slipped out of sight in Danish art history writing. Not until the 1980s did interest in his art begin to see a revival, but at that point Prometheus Unbound proved impossible to locate. The painting was last seen in connection with the exhibition at Charlottenborg in 1932, and although a slew of experts and authorities were all engaged in major detective work, every clue and trace came to a dead end. Until one day in the spring of 2022.

Retrieved by way of Ribe
In connection with the upcoming Carl Bloch exhibition at SMK, the national gallery contacted the Ribe Kunstmuseum to explore the possibility of borrowing two preparatory works for Prometheus Unbound housed there. An employee at the Ribe Kunstmuseum offered to look through their archives to find information of interest in connection with the two works and subsequently unearthed a letter from 2006 written by a colleague at the Greek National Gallery in Athens. The letter stated that Prometheus Unbound appeared on a list of items that the Greek royal family sought to have shipped to London in 1991.
 
So the painting was in Athens! It is part of the former royal collection, now managed by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. In other words, the Prometheus Unbound had been rolled up in storage in Athens all this time. The Greek authorities were happy to lend the painting to SMK, and so the time is ripe for major preparation efforts for the painting to become ready for display for the first time in ninety years.
 
Over the years, many have written about the painting without ever having seen more than a black-and-white photograph of it. When SMK opens the Carl Bloch show in February, everyone will have the opportunity to view Prometheus Unbound in full colour – and full-sized.

The painting
According to myth, the titan Prometheus stole fire from the Greek gods and gave it to mankind. As punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock where he could not escape the eagle that returned every day to eat his liver, which magically grew back overnight. Prometheus was bound to this excruciating fate day after day until the legendary hero Heracles set him free.
 
In 1864, Bloch painted this precise moment – the long-awaited liberation. The picture was done in Rome, having been commissioned by the newly appointed, Danish-born King George of Greece (Georgios I). Over time, the painting has been revered and reviled in equal measure. In 1865 it was hailed as a national symbol of Denmark’s liberation after the nation’s traumatic defeat to Prussia in 1864. Later, it came to be perceived as old-fashioned, a relic from a bygone era. Now, after 90 years, we have the opportunity to see it afresh and make up our own minds.