Nicolai Eigtved - A Change of Direction and Eigtved's Fall

A Change of Direction and Eigtved's Fall

Eigtved became the Art Academy's first Director in 1751. But the winds of artistic change were already blowing, and Eigtved’s rococo style, which had been popular for so long, was about to suffer with the absolutist King's change of interest.

On 30 March 1754, on the King’s thirtieth birthday, the Academy moved to Charlottenborg, and became dedicated as the Royal Danish Academy of Art, after inspiration from France's Académie française. Eigtved was snubbed at the Academy of Art's opening ceremony when professor and royal portraist Carl Gustaf Pilo gave the welcoming speech to King Frederick V, not Eigtved. Eigtved was removed from the Director's position a few days later, and the directorship went to Frenchman sculptor Jacques Francis Joseph Saly.

Also on the same day that the Academy was moved to Charlottenborg, the Eigtved-designed Moltke Palace was officially dedicated by the king.

Eigtved died two months later on 7 June 1754 in Copenhagen. At his death two of the four Amalienborg Palaces were complete, the two western palaces. The work that he had begun was continued by de Thurah strictly according to Eigtved’s plans. The palaces were finally completed in 1760. de Thurah tried unsuccessfully to get project leadership of the work on Frederick's Church, but was denied that role, which went instead to Nicolas-Henri Jardin on 1 April 1756.

He stands along with Laurids de Thurah as the leading architect of his time. His death probably saved him from the same type of long, agonizing downfall, as de Thurah had suffered, when his rococo style gave way to the King’s newly preferred neoclassicism and his newly preferred architect, Nicolas-Henri Jarden. Eigtved also built Sophienberg Palace in Rungsted, the old Royal Danish Teatre, and in 1753 helped extend Fredensborg Palace by adding four symmetrically positioned corner pavilions with separate copper pyramid-shaped roofs to the main building.