Plunder, Wonder, and War in Early Modern Sweden

In this course we will examine how art was recruited in Sweden’s self-fashioning as a modern European state through the lens of museum studies and histories of collecting. Gustav Vasa, founder of the protestant Church of Sweden and the country’s first hereditary monarchy, is often called the father of the modern Swedish state, and Vasa’s descendants ruled during a key period of Swedish cultural history. By examining key objects and monuments commissioned for, gifted to, or looted by the House of Vasa (1523-1648) and those close to them, we will consider how power is buttressed and imaged by material culture. We will ask, how does a Nordic perspective complicate our understanding of the Early Modern Period? 3 hr seminar