Bissen

Bissen, WILHEM, a Danish sculptor, was born in Sleswick in 1798, and from 1823 to 1833 studied in Rome under Thorwaldsen, who, in his will, commissioned him to complete his unfinished works. In 1850 he was made director of the Academy of Arts, Copenhagen, where he died 10th March 1868. Among his masterpieces are the 'Valkyrie,' 'Cupid sharpening his Arrow,' and 'Moses'; his 'Orestes,' and a frieze 134 feet long, perished in the burning of the Christiansborg at Copenhagen (1884).—See the life by Plon (2d ed. Paris, 1871).