About this time Thorvalsden, while supping at Signora
Buti's, let her little boy look at his pistol ; the child pulled
the trigger before he had time to examine if it were loaded,
and shot the sculptor in the left hand and the side.
Fortunately the wounds were slight.
BERTEL THORVALSDEN. 149

In 1822 began the cabals among Italian sculptors which
worried the Dane for so many years. Cardinal Consalvi
gave him the commission for the tomb of Pius VII., which.
Canova would have had if he had been in Eome at the time.
The employment of a Protestant and foreigner very much
annoyed the Italians, who formed a strong cabal against him,
and objected to his work being placed in St. Peter's. After
Consalvi's death the feeling ran so high that the Pope, Leo
XII., was called on as umpire, and not only was the mauso-
leum erected, but the Pope elected the Dane as president to
the Eoyal Academy of St. Luke.^

At this time Thorvalsden had commissions pouring in on
all sides ; but as he had several pupils to whom he confided
not only the cutting in marble, but the enlargement of his
first ideas in clay, he was never but once known to refuse an
order. This exception was when the Archduchess Maria
Louisa, widow of Napoleon I., wished him to make a mauso-
leum to her second husband. Count von Neipperg. He refused,
and almost at the same time accepted a commission for a
colossal bust of Napoleon I. from Mr. A. Murray.
