Lukas Ahorn

Lukas Ahorn was a stonemason and sculptor from Konstanz, on Lake Constance, who is remembered for one monumental task: carving The Lion of Lucerne into the rock face of a former sandstone quarry in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1820–21. The design was by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen; the carving, on a scale Thorvaldsen never worked at himself, was Ahorn's.

The commission

The Lion Monument commemorates the Swiss Guards killed when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris on 10 August 1792. It was proposed by Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen, an officer of the Guard who had been on leave in Lucerne at the time, and paid for by subscription. Thorvaldsen, then working in Rome, supplied a model of a dying lion lying across a broken spear, its paw resting on a shield with the French royal lilies, beside another bearing the arms of Switzerland.

Ahorn's role

The carving was first entrusted to Urs Pankraz Eggenschwiler, who was killed in an accident on the site. Ahorn, who had worked under him, then took charge and completed the relief himself so that it could be unveiled on the anniversary, 10 August 1821. Translating a model of modest size into a lion about ten meters long, cut directly into a natural cliff above a pool, demanded practical skill of a high order: proportions had to be transferred by measurement, and the stone could not be moved or replaced if a cut went wrong. Ahorn's carving keeps the softness of Thorvaldsen's design, the slack weight of the body and the grief in the half-closed eyes.

Legacy

Mark Twain called the lion the saddest and most moving piece of stone in the world. Ahorn's name is seldom remembered beside Thorvaldsen's, but the monument is a reminder of how much nineteenth-century sculpture depended on craftsmen who turned a sculptor's model into stone.

Where to see it

The Lion Monument (Löwendenkmal) is in central Lucerne, a short walk from the old town, and is open to visitors at all times. See more in Famous Sculptures and Death in Art.