One of Birkinshaw's more recent creations is a relief in pure white marble over 30 metres in length, telling the story of Alexander the Great's Triumphal Journey into Babylon, based on the work of the same name by the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.
Born in Dresden to sculptor Franz Pettrich, court sculptor to Elector Frederick Augustus III of Saxony, Pettrich studied in Rome under Bertel Thorvaldsen.
Thrupp also made the acquaintance of Bertel Thorvaldsen, and formed friendships among the English colony of artists at Rome.
The visitors' center also houses a replica of a statue of Jesus Christ by Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen called the Christus.
In Rome, Theed is believed to have studied under Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and Italian Pietro Tenerani, as well as John Gibson and Richard James Wyatt.
Besides religious paintings, landscapes and anatomical studies, Vogel also produced portraits in Rome, of subjects such as Bertel Thorvaldsen, Lucien Bonaparte and – on behalf of the king of Saxony - Pope Pius VII.
After graduating, he spent 10 years in Rome where he became Bertel Thorvaldsen's closest assistant as can be seen in his marble bust of Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1820).
They travelled around together in Europe, meeting Napoleon, Lord Byron and the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.
His wife was the writer and salonist Friederike Brun who had a large international network which included prominent names such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm Grimm, Bertel Thorvaldsen, and the Swiss female writer Madame de Staël with whom she formed a close friendship.
Raphael's Sposalizio (the Marriage of the Virgin) was the key painting of the early collection, and the Academy increased its cultural scope by taking on associates across the First French Empire: David, Pietro Benvenuti, Vincenzo Camuccini, Canova, Thorvaldsen and the archaeologist Ennio Quirino Visconti.
In 1818–27 he went to Italy, and continued his art studies at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome under Andrea Pozzi and privately with Vincenzo Camuccini and Bertel Thorvaldsen; as well as at the Academy of Vienna since 1822 under Antonio Canova.