The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Arts and Architecture REGINA CHRISTINA, ANTIQUARIO: QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN’S DEVELOPMENT OF A CLASSICAL PERSONA THROUGH ALLEGORY AND ANTIQUARIAN COLLECTING A Dissertation in Art History by Theresa A. Kutasz Christensen © 2018 Theresa A. Kutasz Christensen Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2018 This dissertation of Theresa A. Kutasz Christensen was reviewed and approved* by the following: Robin L. Thomas Associate Professor of Art History Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Andrew Schulz Professor of Art History Associate Dean of Research, College of Arts and Architecture Elizabeth Smith Professor of Art History Sherry Roush Professor of Italian Elizabeth Mansfield Professor of Art History Head of the Department of Art History *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. Abstract By examining how Queen Christina of Sweden collected, what she collected, and where she displayed objects, we can better understand her motives for amassing what became the Early Modern period’s largest collection of antiquities owned by a woman. This dissertation argues that personal and political reasons motivated her to develop what could be considered a borderless, genderless, classical persona, that is represented in her display of antique objects. When her collecting habits are assessed alongside her sponsorship of classical scholarship, it becomes clear that Christina’s development of antiquities collections was inextricably tied to the large body of allegorical imagery associated with the queen. I claim that she sought a hybrid historical identity as both Swedish and European, and that the necessity to maintain political authority in both political contexts gave shape to the queen’s self-fashioning through the antique. Through an examination of her scholastic connections, artistic patronage, and adoption of antique guises, this analysis coalesces seemingly disparate aspects of Christina’s visual, rhetorical, and political agendas, reframing them as parts of a lifelong campaign to figure and redefine her Gothic identity. iii Table of Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. x Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ xi Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Aim of Research .................................................................................................................... 1 Summary of the Text ............................................................................................................. 3 State of Research .................................................................................................................... 6 A Practical Note on the Format of the Present Study ........................................................... 21 Abridged Biographical Account .......................................................................................... 24 Part One: The Development and Display of Queen Christina’s Collections in Sweden .............. 38 Preface....................................................................................................................................... 38 Chapter One: Christina’s Cupidity............................................................................................ 44 Italian Art and Roman Antiquities in Early Modern Sweden ............................................... 44 The Sack of Prague ............................................................................................................... 49 The Spoils of War ................................................................................................................. 60 Chapter Two: Purchases and Gifts at Apollo’s Swedish Court ................................................ 67 Agents and Acquisitions ....................................................................................................... 67 Christina’s Early Attempts to Purchase Antiquities in Italy ................................................. 79 iv Purchases in the Netherlands ................................................................................................ 83 The Rockox Marbles ............................................................................................................. 88 Part Two: Power, Knowledge, and Kingship................................................................................ 93 Chapter Three: The Queen, her Collections, and her Roman Context .................................... 98 Establishment and Embellishment ........................................................................................ 98 The Making of a Royal Collection...................................................................................... 111 The Nota delli musei ........................................................................................................... 117 The Palazzo Riario and the Reconstruction of Christina’s Collections .............................. 126 Chapter Four: Antique Sculpture in the Palazzo Riario .......................................................... 135 Christina’s Roman Sculpture Collection Circa 1689 .......................................................... 135 Supports ............................................................................................................................. 137 Room One ........................................................................................................................... 139 Room Two ......................................................................................................................... 142 Room Three ....................................................................................................................... 147 Room Four .......................................................................................................................... 151 Room Five ........................................................................................................................... 155 Room Six ............................................................................................................................ 162 Room Seven ........................................................................................................................ 167 Room Eight ......................................................................................................................... 173 Giardino Secreto ................................................................................................................. 177 v Room Nine .......................................................................................................................... 178 Room Ten............................................................................................................................ 180 Piano Nobile ....................................................................................................................... 182 The Dispersal of the Queen’s Roman Collections .............................................................. 186 A Brief Summary of the Queen’s Galleries ........................................................................ 187 Part Three: Christina, Queen of Sweden, the Goths and Vandals ............................................. 190 Chapter Five: National History, Individual Identity, and a Gothic Apollo ........................... 199 Seventeenth-Century Historicism and the Swedish “Other” .............................................. 200 The Hyperborean Tradition in Sweden ............................................................................... 206 The Return of a Gothic Ruler to Italy ................................................................................. 210 Kingship, Apollo, and the Light of Knowledge .................................................................. 213 Chapter Six: Christina’s Classical Persona Developed through Allegory .............................. 229 Christina as Alexander and Constantine ............................................................................. 229 Minerva of the North ......................................................................................................... 246 The Attributes of Hercules .................................................................................................. 253 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 262 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................... 268 References ................................................................................................................................... 278 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Christina of Sweden in Rome. ....................................................................................... 37 Figure 2: Drottningholm Hercules. ..............................................................................................