Politically and militarily powerful, early modern Scandinavia played an essential role in the development of Central European culture from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. In this volume, Kristoffer Neville shows how the cultural ambitions of Denmark and Sweden were inextricably bound to those of other Central European kingdoms.

Tracing the visual culture of the Danish and Swedish courts from the Reformation to their eventual decline in the eighteenth century, Neville explains how and why they developed into important artistic centers. He examines major projects by figures largely unknown outside of Northern Europe alongside other, more canonical artists-including Cornelis Floris, Adriaen de Vries, and Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach-to propose a more coherent view of this part of Europe, one that rightly includes Scandinavia as a vital component.

The seventeenth century has long seemed a bleak moment in Central European culture. Neville's authoritative and unprecedented study does much to change this perception, showing that the arts did not die in the Reformation and Thirty Years' War but rather flourished in the Baltic region.

About the Author

Kristoffer Neville is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Nicodemus Tessin the Elder: Architecture in Sweden in the Age of Greatness and coeditor of Queen Hedwig Eleonora and the Arts: Court Culture in Seventeenth-Century Northern Europe.

Reviews

"Kristoffer Neville has given early modern scholars a gift. He has presented a major, if often invisible, core of northern Central Europe, Scandinavia, as a coherent and productive cultural center. This book offers history of the richest kind: political, religious, and visual culture. Neville deftly introduces us to unfamiliar castles and palaces, churches, and tombs as well as peripatetic Northern artists. All can now take their rightful place in early modern European art and architectural history, thanks to this revelatory volume."

-Larry Silver,author of Peasant Scenes and Landscapes

"Kristoffer Neville's marvelous book explores the contributions of the often-battling kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden to early modern European art and court culture. Frequently overlooked as the far north, these realms were intricately tied with their Central European and Baltic neighbors through marriage, religion, trade, war, shared borders, and the movement of artists. Neville clearly charts the rich artistic heritage from Frederik II's Kronborg Castle to Queen Christina's collections to Nicodemus Tessin the Younger's ideal plans for Stockholm."

-Jeffrey Chipps Smith,author of The Art of the Goldsmith in late Fifteenth-Century Germany: The Kimbell Virgin and Her Bishop

"In his beautiful and elegant book, Kristoffer Neville presents a new history of the architecture and art of the Scandinavian countries in the Renaissance and Baroque. Anyone who has been to the vast lands ruled by the kings and queens of Denmark and Sweden knows that this art is a revelation. Neville contributes here to a rewriting of Renaissance art, weaving together historical context and a close analysis of extraordinary objects. This is essential reading for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the diversity of early modern culture."

-Christy Anderson,author of Inigo Jones and the Classical Tradition

"Neville has written a useful book that not only serves as an introduction to the cultural landscape of a lesser-known region, but also demonstrates that differences between works produced in Copenhagen and Stockholm on the one hand, and the Holy Roman Empire on the other, were no more significant than those between Berlin, Dresden, and Munich. His book will be an invaluable survey of this often-overlooked corner of Europe for years to come."

-Tomasz Grusiecki Renaissance and Reformation

"The Art and Culture of Scandinavian Central Europe, 1550-1720 is a quite readable, informative look at the history of Scandinavia's role in Central European history and its contributions to art history in particular. There are some lovely color plates and other illustrations that are skillfully explicated. I will never look at an equestrian statue in quite the same way again."

-Susan C. Brantly Scandinavian Studies

"[Neville's] approach, undergirded by an impressive, unostentatious combination of multilingualism, extensive field research (no less than twenty-five illustrations of various monuments are the author's own photographs), and wide-ranging command of historiographies and bibliographies hitherto largely isolated by nationalist paradigms, does much to provide new insights into the vibrant cosmopolitan and polycentric nature of the early modern boreal courtly milieu."

-Ruth Sargent Noyes Renaissance Quarterly

"By focusing on both Sweden and Denmark [Neville] transcends the limits of nationalist art histories and produces an account that is reflective of the porous and polyglot nature of the period's courts. His book will allow for a diffusion of insights synthesized from foundational texts in early modern Scandinavian art, many of which have never been translated. His accessible account of major monuments is a boon to professors seeking to widen the geographic purview of their survey courses."

-Adam Eaker caa.reviews

Book Information
ISBN 9780271082257
Author Kristoffer Neville
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Pennsylvania State University Press
Publisher Pennsylvania State University Press
Weight(grams) 1179g
Dimensions(mm) 254mm * 203mm * 25mm