Christus is an 1833 white Carrara marble statue of the resurrected Jesus by Bertel Thorvaldsen located in the Church of Our Lady, an Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was commissioned as part of a larger group, which includes 11 of the original 12 apostles and Paul the Apostle (instead of Judas Iscariot).
The statue has been widely reproduced; images and replicas of it were adopted by the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in the 20th century to emphasize the centrality of Jesus in its teachings.
Original sculpture
The Church of Our Lady was destroyed by fire in September 1807 from bombardment by the British Royal Navy during the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807, part of the Napoleonic Wars. When the church was being rebuilt, Thorvaldsen was commissioned in 1819 to sculpt statues of Jesus and the apostles, a baptismal font, other furnishings, and decorative elements. A plaster cast model was supplied for the church's consecration on June 7, 1829, with the finished white Carrara marble statue replacing it in November 1833. The statue is tall.
The inscription at the base of the sculpture reads "Kommer til mig" ("Come unto me") with a reference to the Bible verse Matthew 11:28, in which Jesus is depicted with His hands spread, displaying the wounds in the hands of His resurrected body. The original plaster cast model is on display in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sites of replicas
Churches
Wawel Cathedral, Kraków, Poland (1833; mounted in 1835) St. Petri Church (Church of Norway), Stavanger, Norway (1853) Koranda Congregation Chapel (Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren), Plzeň, Czech Republic Church of the Transfiguration of The Lord (Old Catholic Church of the Czech Republic), Varnsdorf, Czech Republic St. John United Lutheran Church (1926; originally a Danish-speaking congregation) in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, U.S. St. Paul's United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas, U.S. Trinity Lutheran Church in Galesburg, Illinois, U.S. (a wood carving by Meyer in Oberammergau, Germany) Onsta Gryta Church (Church of Sweden) in Västerås, Sweden (2009; six feet tall; 30,000 white Lego pieces) In front of the Church of Peace, a Protestant church in Potsdam, Germany (1845–1854) In front of the Cathedral Church of the Advent, an Episcopalian church in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
Cemeteries
Oakwood Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas, U.S. (bronze) Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, U.S. (1947; The Court of the Christus on Cathedral Drive) Forest Lawn Cypress cemetery, Cypress, California, U.S. (1959; The Garden of Faith on Sunset Drive) Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills cemetery, Hollywood Hills, California, U.S. (The Court of Remembrance) Forest Lawn Covina Hills cemetery, Covina Hills, California, U.S. Luisenfriedhof I cemetery, Berlin, Germany (bronze) Luisenfriedhof III cemetery, Berlin, Germany The Haggenmacher family tomb at the Farkasréti Cemetery, Budapest, Hungary (1919)
Hospital
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. (1896; Christus Consolator)
LDS Church use
Stephen L Richards, an apostle and first counselor to church president David O. McKay in the First Presidency, purchased a replica of the Christus the late 1950s and gifted it to the church. It was completed by the Rebechi Aldo & Gualtiero studio and made from white Carrara marble from Pietrasanta, Tuscany, Italy in April 1959. It arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah in June 1959. It was placed in the unfinished North Visitors' Center on Temple Square in Salt Lake City in 1962, and was unveiled in 1967. It is tall and weighs 12,000 pounds. In preparation for the demolition of the North Visitors’ Center, the replica was removed in November 2021 and placed in storage for conservation. Its final home has not yet been disclosed. In December 2019, another replica (8-foot-tall) was placed across the street in the Conference Center.
A second Christus replica was sculpted by the Rebechi Aldo & Gualtiero studio in to be displayed in the LDS Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. It was an exact duplicate of the Salt Lake City replica being tall and weighing 12,000 pounds. Its display "was intended to help visitors understand that Latter-day Saints are Christians". After the World's Fair ended on October 17, 1965, the replica was shipped from New York to the Los Angeles California Temple visitors' center on November 21, 1966.