Enfilade

From Routledge:

Kristoffer Neville and Lisa Skogh, eds., Queen Hedwig Eleonora and the Arts: Court Culture in Seventeenth-Century Northern Europe (New York: Routlege, 2021), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1472489609 (hardback), $160 / ISBN: 978-1032097244 (paperback), $49.

As queen consort and dowager, Hedwig Eleonora (1636–1715) held a unique position in Sweden for more than half a century. As the dominant collector and patron of art and architecture in the realm, she left a strong mark on Swedish court culture. Her dynastic network among the Northern European courts was extensive, and this helped to make Sweden a major cultural center in Northern Europe in the later seventeenth century. This book represents the first major scholarly publication on the full range of Hedwig Eleonora’s endeavours, from the financing of her court to her place within a larger princely network, to her engagements with various cultural pursuits, to her public image. As the contributors show, despite her high profile, political position, and conspicuous patronage, Hedwig Eleonora experienced little of the animosity directed at many other foreign queens and regents, such as the Medici in France and Henrietta Maria in England. In this way, she provides a model for a different and more successful way of negotiating the difficulties of joining a foreign court; the analysis of her circumstances thus adds a substantial dimension to the study of early modern queenship. Presenting much new scholarship, this volume highlights one extremely significant early modern woman and her imprint on Northern European history, and fosters international awareness of the importance of early modern Scandinavia for European cultural history.

Kristoffer Neville is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of California, Riverside. Lisa Skogh is Project Co-Investigator in the Research Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

C O N T E N T S

1  Kristoffer Neville (University of California, Riverside) and Lisa Skogh (Victoria and Albert Museum), Introduction: Queen Hedwig Eleonora and the Arts
2  Jill Bepler (Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel), ‘The Queen of the North’: Hedwig Eleonora and Her German Family in Paint and Print
3  Gabriele Ball (Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel), Queen Hedwig Eleonora’s Societal Network within the Tugendliche and the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft
4  Björn Asker (National Archives, Stockholm), Hedwig Eleonora as Dowager Queen and Administrator
5  Lisa Skogh (V&A Museum), The Pretiosa Cabinet at Ulriksdal Palace
6  Kjell Wangensteen (Princeton University), Hedwig Eleonora as Patron of David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl
7  Mikael Ahlund (Uppsala University Art Museums), The Wilderness inside Drottningholm: David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl and the Northern Nature at the Court of Hedwig Eleonora
8  Lars-Olof Larsson (Christian-Albrecht-University, Kiel), David Klöcker Ehrenstrahlʼs Portraits of Hedwig Eleonoraʼs Siblings: Invention and the Presentation of the Family
9  Lars Ljungström (Royal Collections, Stockholm), Hedwig Eleonora and Building as a Princely Pursuit
10  Kristoffer Neville (University of California, Riverside), Hedwig Eleonora and the Practice of Architecture
11  Anders Jarlert (Lund University), Hedwig Eleonora, Lund University, and the Learned
12  Mara Wade (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Ballet, Kunstkammer, and the Education of Princess Hedwig Eleonora at the Gottorf Court
13  Maria Schildt (Uppsala University), Hedwig Eleonora and Music at the Swedish Court, 1654–1726
14  Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly (Oxford University), Hedwig Eleonora in Print: From ‘Citronat’ to ‘Wundermutter’