Erik XIV, King of Sweden

Erik XIV, who ruled Sweden from 1560 to 1568, is shown with the two people closest to his throne: his queen, Karin Månsdotter, whom he married in July 1568, and his secretary Jöran Persson, the adviser whose influence over the king the nobility resented, and who was seized, tortured and executed when the king fell. Georg von Rosen painted the scene in 1871, three centuries after the events. Erik, born at Tre Kronor in 1533, was a son of Gustav Vasa; he took northern Estonia under his protection, one of the causes of the Nordic Seven Years’ War with Denmark-Norway, and the murder of the Sture family at Uppsala in 1567 opened a period of mental illness from which he recovered only to be deposed the next year by his brother Johan III. He died a prisoner at Örbyhus in 1577, probably poisoned on his brother’s order. Von Rosen, born in Paris in 1843 into a Swedish noble family, worked in the academic manner, chiefly history painting and portraits; he became professor at the Stockholm academy in 1880 and its director, and in that office came into conflict with the younger painters who demanded reform — the Opponenterna — among whom were the men who would lead Swedish painting into the 1890s. The picture is one of the museum’s large history canvases at 274 × 355 cm, and is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.