Saturday, March 21, 2009

If your follow the balcony of the cathedral to the left- you will find a tiny dark room about the half the size of our family room in Sacramento. Bring a flash light and you will discover the most spectacular treasure of the Fredricksborg Castle. We came to the castle to find this room.
This room was King Christian's prayer closet. It was covered with beautiful paintings of the life of Christ but in 1859 a good part of the cathedral and castle burned to the ground. The Castle was rebuilt and a man named Carl Bloch was commissioned to repaint the lost paintings. When they saw the beautiful original paintings that Carl Bloch began to create.. they invited him to continue to paint his own fresh new paintings for this room. He painted twenty three paintings of Christ that depicted His life from birth to His crucifixion and resurrection. The King's traveling silver altar stands in front of some of the Bloch's works -trying to overshadow the sacred paintings. If the museum guard had not been there, we would have moved the altar out of the way, to get a better view. The guard was more excited by the solid silver altar but he did admit that lots of Mormons like to visit this room. He didn't know that we were Mormons. Our name tags were under our coats.

Years later, President Monson found these paintings of Christ. He wanted to publish them in the Improvement Era, the church magazine of that time, so that the young people of the Church would enjoy more fully the study of the life of Christ. Thank you, Carl Bloch, for giving to us the opportunity to love and share these memorable pieces of art with all the world.


This is the birth of Christ by Carl Bloch.



And Jesus giving his "Sermon on the Mount" around the Sea of Galilee.




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