Jenny pulled her graying hair into a ponytail and rubbed her face to get some blood into her cheeks. Yesterday had been a frustrating day of work in her atelier, followed by an even more frustrating evening. At three in the morning she had had to smoke two joints to be able to fall asleep. Now she was tired and out of sorts and certainly not ready to lead the guided tour at ten fifteen. She plodded from the staff room and down the vaulted corridors, past statues whose vacant eyes were all turned toward the courtyard. Her heavy footsteps echoed under the star-bedecked sky-blue ceilings, displaying a new zodiac sign in each vault, and she smiled as she passed Scorpio, the sculptor’s sign as well as her own.

Art historians generally found Thorvaldsen to be too Scandinavian, chilly and chaste, but Jenny knew better. The museum was full of secret symbols and romance that revealed Thorvaldsen had been anything but frigid and boring. Take the axis that ran from the west-facing door past the Scorpio sign, straight through the ivy-covered burial monument, and out to the Christ figure by the east door. From birth to death and resurrection in one line, illustrated so subtly and smoothly. Not to mention all the erotic details and the humor that lurked everywhere just below the surface. When Jenny gave tours, she consistently described Thorvaldsen as a philosopher of love, emphasizing his freewheeling, erotic life with his many girlfriends and lovers outside the formal bonds of matrimony. Often people couldn’t see beyond the dead gazes of the marble statues and found the museum boring. If they only knew! Eroticism has many faces.

Jenny opened the doors and let the spring light stream into the lobby, followed by eager visitors. She welcomed them, pointed them toward the ticket window, and let them know about her upcoming tour in a few minutes. Then she stood ready, legs apart and hands behind her back, below the plaster statue of Pope Pius the Seventh, the marble counterpart of which stood in St. Peter’s Church in Rome.