[1][3] Abildgaard was trained by a painting master before he joined the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen, where he studied under the guidance of Johan Edvard Mandelberg and Johannes Wiedewelt.

[4] The Large Gold Medallion from the Academy won in 1767 included a travel stipend, which he waited five years to receive.

He assisted Professor Johan Mandelberg of the Academy as an apprentice around 1769 and for painting decorations for the royal palace at Fredensborg.

While in Rome, he studied Annibale Carracci's frescoes at the Palazzo Farnese and the paintings of Rafael, Titian, and Michelangelo.

In addition he studied various other artistic disciplines (sculpture, architecture, decoration, wall paintings) and developed his knowledge of mythology, antiquities, anatomy, and perspective.

[5] In the company of Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and painter Johann Heinrich Füssli, he began to move away from the classicism he had learned at the Academy.

As royal historical painter, Abildgaard was commissioned around 1780 by the Danish government to paint large monumental pieces, a history of Denmark, to decorate the entirety of the Knights' Room (Riddersal) at Christiansborg Palace.

Abilgaard used pictorial allegory like ideograms, to communicate ideas and transmit messages through symbols to a refined public who was initiated into this form of symbology.

He was inspired by the French Revolution, and in 1789–1790 he tried to incorporate these revolutionary ideals into the Knights' Room at Christiansborg Palace.

The fire at Christiansborg Palace, in February 1794, also had a dampening effect on his career, for seven of the ten monumental paintings of the grandiose project were destroyed in that accident.

In 1804 he received a commission for a series of paintings for the throne room in the new palace, but disagreements between the artist and the crown prince put a halt to this project.

When Abildgaard found out his wife was unfaithful with Reinhard von Eppingen [da], chamberlain at the Danish court, he forced the pair to flee in disgrace across the Sound to Helsingborg, Sweden, getting a divorce.

[7] Though Nicolai Abildgaard won immense fame in his own generation and helped lead the way to the period of art known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting, his works are scarcely known outside of Denmark.

As a technical painter, he attained remarkable success, his tone being very harmonious and even, but the effect to a foreigner's eye is rarely interesting.