1. The Victor

"Kettledrums and trumpets / Mortars and muskets / Swords blood-drenched and Weapons sparkling / Billowing smoke and blazing fires / The thumping and the roaring / Of carts and wagons rolling /The flash and thunder of Wrangel's artillery". This was the martial wordplay that greeted Carl Gustaf Wrangel (1613-1676) several weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia. The Swedish general was quartered in Schwabach with his troops at the time, but often visited nearby Nuremberg, where the poet and aristocrat Georg Philipp Harsdörffer penned this "paean" to Wrangel's exploits. The poem, which covered the last four years of the Thirty Years' War, or the period from the defeat of the Danish navy at Fehmarn to the Sack of Bavaria in 1648, was promptly put to music by the Nuremberg composer Sigmund Theophil Staden, and both the music and lyrics were printed by Heinrich Pillenhoffer.

The anti-imperial bias of this work, however, was not quite in keeping with the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg's policy of neutrality. A controversy soon flared in 1648, because Harsdörffer, who held municipal office, had written in the first lines that this was Nuremberg's homage to the Swedish hero. A brisk court procedure led to the confiscation of the printed edition and to admonitions and minor penalties for the author, composer and printer. Wrangel himself had understanding for the political complications, for he was well-informed about the situation in Nuremberg through Swedish agents. One of them, Jacob Barth, sent him over 100 letters during the period from April to December 1648. Duke August von Braunschweig-Lüneburg's agent in Nuremberg, Georg Forstenheuser, sent him a report on Harsdörffer's diplomatic faux-pas. According to Forstenheuser, Wrangel's opinion was that "this [was] enough of a good thing, once the song has been sung, we don't need to hear ut again". [1]

Wrangel was surely flattered nonetheless. His victory had been praised by a socially high-ranking poet and one of Nuremberg's leading musicians. This homage confirmed his status as war-hero on the European scene. He probably had even more grounds for satisfaction when he was elected member of the famous Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft ("Fruitful Society"), which included not just high-ranking military and political figures, but also scholars and poets. He entered as 523rd member, with the name "The Victor". In the stanzas that were written for his reception, Wrangel was described as "a hero who sought his foes honourably to overthrow". In verses written for the same occasion, Diederich von dem Werder even claimed that Wrangel's victories had brought the armistice about. No wonder the Swedish field-marshal treasured the two poems, which were preserved in his archives in mansucript versions. [2] It may be that he had waited for his nomination to the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft not without some impatience, for his near-contemporaries Robert Douglas and Gaspard Corneille de Mortaigne, who also fought under the Swedish flag, had already become members in 1644. Wrangel's election to this society in 1649 guaranteed him a position in the Central-European elite.

The role of war-hero was nothing new to Carl Gustaf Wrangel, who had just turned 35 at the time of the Treaty of Westphalia. He was the son of Herman Wrangel, himself a Swedish field-marshal of Baltic origin, while his mother belonged to the old aristocratic Grip family of Sweden. Carl Gustaf Wrangel was born on 13 December 1613 in his father's relatively modest castle at Skokloster (situated between Stockholm and Uppsala). After the Treaty of Westphalia, he began planning to build a new Skokloster Castle next to his homestead. In their present state, the contrast between the father's house and the son's mighty castle still clearly demonstrates the rapid growth of Swedish ambitions.

Wrangel joined the Swedish troops in Germany at the early age of 18. His higher education was correspondingly limited, but still fulfilled the aristocratic ideal of a broad civil and military education. He learned the fundamentals from tutors and probably also at a school for the noble-born in Stockholm. Although he was never very proficient in Latin, he naturally subscribed to the Swedish version of political Humanism. Roman heroes were taken as models and Gustavus II Adolphus was seen as a new Augustus. During his student years, Wrangel made the requisite trips to Leiden and Paris, which had recently become the favorite haunts of the younger Swedish aristocrats. Wrangel represented a new type of soldier-aristocrat that prospered during the Thirty Years' War and was open to the influence of French fashions and trends. All the same, he lacked the deeper humanistic education of Swedish aristocrats of the older generation like Axel Oxenstierna and Per Brahe the Younger.

Wrangel swiftly rose in the military hierarchy. In 1641 and 1642, he played an important role in the engagements at Wolfenbüttel and Leipzig as a member of the Swedish Commander-in-Chief Lennart Torstenson's General Staff. On the seas, he commanded a combined Dutch and Swedish fleet that defeated a numerically inferior Danish force near Fehmarn in 1644. In December 1645, illness forced Torstenson to delegate more and more authority to Wrangel for the conduct of operations. The latter's need to make conspicuous displays of his newly-gained power and glory grew apace. In January 1646, he issued an order to begin stocking building materials for his new castle at Skokloster. Also in early 1646, Wrangel, then only 32 years old, was promoted to the rank of field-marshal, thus becoming the commander-in-chief of all Swedish troops in Germany for the next two years. He was succeeded in this position by Queen Christina's cousin, Count Palatine Charles Gustavus, who was, however, instructed to follow the advice of his more experienced predecessor.

Even while the Thirty Years' War was still in progress, Wrangel was actively involved in shaping his contemporaries' - and posterity's - image of his military exploits. A personal success came with the publication of Part V of Matthäus Merian the Elder's Theatrum Europaeum in 1647, with commentaries written by Johann Peter Lotichius. The tome begins with Merian's dedication to Wrangel, who had given him "great and pleasant support for the publication of the present work by the communication of various wonderful drawings and sketches, including other handsome descriptions". The drawings mentioned here by Merian had been executed by Georg Wilhelm Kleinsträttl, an officer in Wrangel's army. The explanation for the first part of the quote is to be found in Wrangel's ledgers and correspondence with Merian: he promoted the publication in June 1647 with a grant of one hundred ducats and disbursed another hundred ducats after having received three copies of the book. He had every reason to be satisfied with the result. In addition to Merian's acknowledgements in his dedicatory preface, the volume also presented an engraved portrait of Wrangel adorned with his coat-of-arms and motto, "Non est mortale quod opto" ("I choose the intransitory"). Beneath this portrait is a poem in which Lotichius compares Wrangel's campaign in southern Germany to Hannibal's expedition over the Alps. Seven etchings representing Swedish victories inform the reader that, in 1646-1647, Wrangel personally defeated Höxter, Paderborn, Stadtberg (Obermarsberg), Bregenz, Mainau (on the Lake of Constance), Schweinfurt and Eger. It must have been a source of further gratification to Wrangel when Merian included the first three victories in his Topografia Westfaliae, which was also published in 1647. [3] This fifth volume of the Theatrum Europaeum shows how Wrangel had learned how to make effective use of the media of his time during the second half of the Thirty Years' War.



II Before the Treaty of Westphalia

Carl Gustaf Wrangel created a veritable travelling court which followed him throughout his campaigns. Along the way, he accumulated ever more impressive collections of objets d'art, especially silverware and jewelry, with the help of his young wife, Anna Margareta von Haugwitz. Born in 1622 in Calbe on the Saale, this noblewoman whose family had lost all its property during the Sack of Magdeburg in 1631 had become Wrangel's wife in 1640. The couple had four children, including three sons whose names - Hannibal, Augustus Gideon, and Achilles - lietrally expressed their father's aspiration to establish a dynasty of military leaders. [4]

However, the older generation of Swedes was somewhat put off by Wrangel's "French look". In a letter to Axel Oxenstierna, General Johann Banér complained that "Major-General Wrangel is of absolutely no use to me, for his ways are those of a child and a dandy. In France and Holland, he adopted the customs to such an degree that he clothes himself and behaves like a native-born Frenchman". Yet this French influence increased all the more as a result of Wrangel's close collaboration with Turenne and other French commanders in South Germany. Significantly, when his son Carl Philip was baptised in the summer of 1648 in his camp at Dingolfing, to the northwest of Munich, Maréchal Turenne was among the godfathers. The social dimension of the baptism of Wrangel's children during the Thirty Years' War would be worth a study of its own. A French tailor is mentioned in his account-books in 1647, and although German was the main language spoken by his suite, Wrangel himself was fond of expressing himself in French. [5]

Part of Wrangel's growing collection of artworks and objets d'art in those years consisted of spoils and trophies. At the battle of Leipzig in 1642, he came into possession of an important collection of silverware that belonged to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. As we will see, this trophy was to play a pre-eminent role in Wrangel's collection. It has often been claimed that Wrangel acquired various objects from the imperial art cabinet in Prague, but the evidence for this is quite dubious. For one thing, he did not participate in the storming of the Prague's Malâ Strana by the Swedes in the summer of 1648; for another, he made his first visit to this city only after the Treaty of Westphalia, in connection with the preliminary negotiations for the so-called Prague Conference on war indemnities. Nevertheless, convincing arguments retracing the origin of the famous "Skoklosterschild" to the Prague art cabinet have been advanced. This ornamental shield in the Weapons Chamber at Skokloster was crafted by Elisaeus Libaerts in Antwerp in 1560. The Swedish general's name is also associated with a silver Pegasus carrying a mechanical globe (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) made by the Viennese watchmaker Gerhard Emmoser in 1597. Wrangel is supposed to have taken this objet d'art from the art cabinet and subsequently given it to Queen Christina, but it would seem that she received it from the imperial marshal Jacob De la Gardie instead. Noteworthy in this connection is Arcimboldo's famous Portrait of Emperor Rudolph II as Vertumnus, which belongs to the Skokloster collection. But the first Swedish owner of this picture seems to have been the "Reichsdrost" Per Brahe the Younger (1602-1680); the painting came to Skokloster only in the nineteenth century. The young general was in any case interested in the famous imperial collections and well informed as to their contents: the two inventories preserved in his archives have long been published. Wrangel was also impressed by other Central-European art cabinets, especially the collection of the Architect and Councillor Joseph Furttenbach in Ulm. He had the opportunity to study them in detail in early 1647, during the negotiations in Ulm that were to lead to the armistice in Bavaria. Wrangel's weapons chamber in Skokloster, which will be discussed later, was directly inspired by Furttenbach's own collection. [6]

When Wrangel became commander-in-chief of the Swedish forces in 1646 he received gifts from representatives of the allied powers and from neutral states or provinces. In a letter which reached the general in Babenhausen toward the end of the year, the young Louis XIV congratulated him and expressed his joy at Wrangel's collaboration with Turenne. In March of the following year, Cardinal Mazarin sent Wrangel and his wife presents from the King and from Anne of Austria: a sword and a portrait of the French king and his mother ("La Reyne a voulu que Madame vostre femme eust le portrait du Roy et le Sien, et le Roy que V. Exc. receut une Espée"). Wrangel prefaced his response with the claim that words failed him - "Je n'ay point de paroles" - to express his gratitude, then went on to formulate it in the most eloquent terms. [7]

In 1647, the City of Nuremberg commissioned a set of engraved glasses from the glassmaker Georg Schwanhardt the Elder to be presented to Wrangel. One of these goblets inscribed with the greeting "Willkommen Ihr Herren" is still to be seen at Skokloster today. [8] Prince-Bishop Veit Adam von Gepeckh in Freising presented Wrangel and his family with a rhinoceros-horn cup and jewels. This was in 1648, as Wrangel's and Turenne's troops controlled Freising and the surrounding area. Being decorated on the underside with an embracing couple, the cup may have been intended to inspire erotic sentiments, but also to prevent poisoning. The exotic origins of the material must surely have aroused Wrangel's interest, for exoticism was one of the leitmotifs of his activity as collector. The ostrich that Wrangel presented to Queen Christina in the same year also came from the Prince-Bishop's private zoo. The bird was transported via Wismar and arrived safe and sound in Stockholm on the 4th of November (old style), two days after the news of the Treaty of Westphalia. [9]

It is important to note that, in the midst of this war, Wrangel also purchased the various precious wares that he needed for his court. For example, bills dated from the summer of 1648 show that Wrangel and his wife bought large quantities of silverware for the sum of 5,813 imperial talers. Although it was purchased through Nuremberg, the silver had been worked in Augsburg by Hans Georg Lang and Martin Riedel. Music was a necessary facet of his court life in the field. Already in 1644, Wrangel commissioned an organ from the Danish organmaker Peter Karstens in Viborg. [10]

A lavish diplomatic gift came in 1647, when Duke August von Braunschweig-Lüneburg presented him with the last of Philip Hainhofer's four celebrated large curio-cabinets. The duke had purchased the cabinet shortly before Hainhofer's death in that same year. The deal was handled by Georg Forstenheuser in Nuremberg. Unfortunately, the splendid treasures in this miniature museum have long been dispersed, but the cabinet has come down to us and can be seen in its modified form in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Wrangel lost no time in finding out the value of this present: 6,000 imperial talers, not an unusually high sum, considering the fact that it was a diplomatic gift. It may be that he was not fully convinced of the artistic value of the cabinet, which Hainhofer himself had vainly tried to sell for a long time (1643-1646). This must have given Wrangel the impression that the piece was out of fashion. Nevertheless, Hainhofer's exhaustive description of the cabinet and its particularities are to be found in Wrangel's archives. The latter thus had opportunity to inform himself about the intentions of this remarkable miniature museum. This attempt to condense the world into a curio-cabinet may well have inspired his design for Skokloster Castle, which could be interpreted as an art and curio-cabinet on a grand scale. [11]



III. A Book of Swedish Heroes

In the winter of 1647-1648, Wrangel engaged the services of the portraitist Matthäus Merian the Younger. In his autobiography, Merian, who had learned his craft under such masters as Joachim van Sandrart in Amsterdam and Anthonis van Dyck in London, later complained of the cold and hardships of military life, but the presence of an official painter increased the prestige of Wrangel's nomadic court: Alexander the Great had had his Apelles, and now Wrangel had his Merian. In the summer of 1650, after the death of his father, Matthäus Merian the Elder, he took over the family publishing and trading house in Frankfurt am Main with his brother, Caspar. He continued working for Wrangel after 1650 on occasion and ultimately executed some sixty portraits for him. He also worked as Wrangel's purchasing agent in Frankfurt, handling, among other things, the general's numerous wine orders.

Merian painted portraits of members of the Wrangel family, but his main activity was the portrayal of the generals and officers in Sweden's service. Engravings of these martial portraits were intended to illustrate an important publication project, the "Schwedische Heldenbuch" ("Book of Swedish Heroes"). While portraits of Swedish diplomats were painted during the negotiations for the Treaty of Westphalia, now homage was to be paid to Swedish war heroes in words and images. [12] Wrangel's models for this undertaking were the German "books of heroes" that had been published during the first half of the century. According to the earliest-known catalogue, established on 29 May 1655 in Stockholm, this type of book was well represented in his library. Among others, there is the shelfmark of Nicolaus Bellus' ]Michael Caspar Lundorp] Heldenbuch (Frankfurt a. Main, 1629), which honours forty war-heroes from the first decade of the "German War" with texts and engraved portraits. [13]

Merian's military portraits later decorated the walls of Wrangel's castle, and the artist used them as models for various sections of his Theatrum Europeaum. However, although Matthäus Merian the Younger laboured on this great venture for a quarter of a century, the publication of the Schwedischen Heldenbuch kept stalling. Many problems arose: in 1654, for example, he complained that the Swedish generals did not answer his letters. Nonetheless, in the following year, he was able to show eighty engravings to Queen Christina, who had stopped in Frankfurt on her way to her abdication in Rome. The Queen gave her support to the project and recommended the publication of separate editions in German and Latin. Merian informed Wrangel about this in a letter in October 1655. He wrote that he was planning a thirty-volume series that would encompass the reigns of Gustavus Adolphus, Christina, and Charles Gustavus. [14] The famous portrait of "Gustavus Adolphus in Polish Dress", which has been convincingly attributed to Merian, was probably also intended as a model for the first part of the Heldenbuch. [15]

Early in 1674, Merian wrote to Wrangel telling him that he was still working on this Heldenbuch. In December of that same year, Wrangel led an ill-fated military expedition against Brandenburg, whose Prince, Friedrich Wilhelm, was one of Merian's major clients. Although Merian's full-length portrait of Wrangel was accepted into the Grand Elector's military gallery in Potsdam, the publication of a catalogue of Swedish war-heroes seemed rather inappropriate under the circumstances. The Swedish Heldenbuch immortalizing "The Victor" and his comrades-at-arms was never to be completed. [16]



IV. The Nuremberg Execution Day 1649-1650

"Wrangel paid me a visit yesterday, and presented himself in word and dress as a man of the world," wrote Ottavio Piccolomini in May 1649 at the beginning of Emperor Ferdinand the Third's execution day. [17] Piccolomini, the duke of Amalfi, imperial commander-in-chief and chief delegate in Nuremberg, was a man whom Wrangel had met more than once on the battelfields. In that same year, Wrangel ordered his official painter, Merian, to paint a portrait of Piccolomini with the Order of the Golden Fleece on his breastplate. [18] Piccolomini was probably one of the figures who inspired Wrangel after the Congress in his ever more splendid court and in his princely building projects in North Germany and Sweden.

Count Palatine Charles Gustavus, Swedish Generalissimo and, starting in 1649, successor to the Crown of Sweden, directed the Swedish delegation in Nuremberg with the assistance of Alexander Erskein and Bengt Oxenstierna. As military advisor and personal friend of the Count Palatine, Wrangel was in an advantageous position and could successfully further his personal interests; thus, he received a major share of the indemnities paid to the chiefs-of-staff (60,000 Reichstaler). [19]

In early 1650, Wrangel visited Swedish Pomerania, over which he ruled as Swedish governor-general since 1648. But his attention then went primarily to the Nuremberg Congress. He was an active and enthusiastic participant in the great banquets that were held there; baroque extravaganzas complete with fireworks, theatre and all manner of other spectacles. His fondness for fireworks in particular is well documented. [20] In connection with these festivities, he was able to meet such Nuremberger poets and musicians as Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, Johann Klaj, Johann Erasmus Kindermann, Sigmund Theophil Staden and Valentin Dretzel. Wrangel was able to hear the latter at the organ when he attended services at the church of St. Sebaldus. [21]

Wrangel was also responsible for arranging the shooting spree that concluded Count Palatine Karl Gustav's banquet in September, as well as the two-hour-long fireworks of the following evening. One week later, he held a banquet of his own which included theatre, dance perfomances, fireworks and horseback-riding. Because of its unofficial status, this banquet received little attention from chroniclers at the time. For their princely lifestyle, Wrangel and his wife purchased silver and tableware from the silversmiths Lang and Riedel and the silver-dealer Michael Spengler. The behind-the-scenes rivalry between the Swedish grandees caused large quantities of South-German objets d'art to find their way to Sweden in the wake of the Congress. The most important of these were certainly the commissions of Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, who presented Queen Christina with, among other gifts, a silver throne that can still be seen in the Imperial Hall in the palace in Stockholm. [22]

Among the writers whom Wrangel met in Nuremberg was Christoph Arnold, who dedicated his panegyric on the German language (Kunst-Spiegel, Nuremberg, 1649) to him and to his friend Lorens van der Linde. This was a very conventional way for the author to pay homage to the two Swedish soldiers' interest in the arts. Later, during Christmas 1650, Johann Klaj dedicated his Geburt Christi to Wrangel, going so far as to compare the Swedish military leader to Archangel "Field-Marshal Michael". In 1660, the theologian Johann Michael Dilherr, whom Wrangel had heard preach at St. Sebaldus', sent him a printed edition of his sermons illustrated with engravings by Georg Strauch. [23] Among the writers could also be mentioned the prolific astrologer Andreas Goldmayer, who claimed to have warned Gustavus Adolphus before the battle of Lützen in 1632. Next to considerations on the fate of Wrangel's daughter, Margareta Juliana, there is an exhaustive, 539-page-long astrological analysis of Wrangel's life dated 24 August 1649, in Nuremberg, containing interpretations for the years 1648-1665. It is difficult to say whether Wrangel took these interpretations into account, but he sometimes did show interest in astrological predictions concerning his health. [24]

During his sojourn in Nuremberg in the winter of 1649-1650, Anselm van Hulle, who had been active as portraitist during the Westphalian peace negotiations, also received commissions from Wrangel. This led to a handsome lifesize portrait of Wrangel's wife, Anna Margareta (today at Skokloster), which shows the Nuremberg Town Hall in the background . A portrait of Wrangel was engraved by Pieter de Jode the Younger. In early 1650, Wrangel paid the "Dutch painter" two hundert Reichstaler. [25] In the 1665 inventory of Wrangel's library, Van Hulle's print series depicting the "Pacificatores" was described as "etched portraits of the delegates present in Osnabrück during the peace negotiations". The painter's stay in Nuremberg was a good opportunity for him to cultivate his contacts in Swedish circles. The archives of Count Palatine Charles Gustavus contain a letter written by Hulle in Nuremberg on 8 January 1650 to Queen Christina, asking her if she had received the engravings of the peace envoys posted eight months earlier and telling her that he had "sent the same book to all the Kings and Princes who had dispatched delegates there." [26]

As we have already seen, however, it was Matthäus Merian the Younger who worked for Wrangel the most in Nuremberg. His former teacher, Joachim van Sandrart, who brushed a now-lost portrait of Wrangel as war-hero, proved to be a major competitor. Sandrart's description of this portrait gives us an idea of how the Swedish general liked to be seen: Wrangel stood in "full-length and gear, next to the flashing and thundering cannon, undaunted on the field of battle, defying the enemy". In his 1675 Teutschen Academie, Sandrart related that when Wrangel conquered Landhut in 1648, he visited the Jesuit church and admired Sandrart's Healing of St. Sebastian and Leavetaking of the Apostles: "He immediately sought out these two Altarpieces, sat before them and gazed upon them a long time, praising both the art and the artist" - an account which should be taken with the usual caution. [27]

Sandrart's most prominent Swedish client in this connection was the successor to the Throne, Charles Gustavus. Among his commissions was the large equestrian portrait which is to be seen today at Skokloster, but which was not in Wrangel's possession at the time. Charles Gustavus also commissioned the famous Peace Banquet at the Nuremberg Town Hall. [28] Wrangel was granted his prestigious position in this picture only after a fierce dispute over priority of rank. He had no official diplomatic function at the time, but his power was a factor to be reckoned with until the retreat of the Swedish troops. At Piccolomini's banquet, which closed the Nuremberg Congress on 24 June 1650, Wrangel also had a place of honour, but again after disputes over precedence, and this time with Swedish as well as with imperial delegates.

After the Congress, Wrangel travelled to the new Swedish province of Bremen-Verden with the successor to the Throne. In his residence at Bremervörde, stimulated by his months-long stay in Nuremberg, he organised a ballet paying homage to the Count Palatine as Prince of Peace: young women costumed in the "Egyptian" fashion represented the letters V.C.G.P.P.D.R.L.P. (Vive Charles Gustave Prince. Pal. du Rhyn, le Pacifique). [29] This bears witness to the cultural influences experienced by the Swedish general, and other Swedish aristocrats, while in Nuremberg. The Congress that marked the end of the Thirty Years' War made a major contribution to the europeanization of the rising Swedish power.



V. Country Gentleman and Art Collector

In Nuremberg, Wrangel commissioned thirteen ceremonial halberds. These halbards were carried by his standard-bearers during his appearances as newly-appointed governor-general of Swedish-Pomerania after the Congress. They were decorated with insignia, some of which were taken from Peter Isselburg's Emblemata Politica (Nuremberg, 1617). [30] Wrangel was appointed governor-general in 1648 and, except for an interruption in 1653-1656, held this office until his death. Swedish-Pomerania, which belonged to the Swedish Crown, was an "imperial estate", and so belonged to the Holy Roman Empire as well. Wrangel quickly adopted the role of self-styled North German prince.

The title of count in early 1651 brought further prestige to the governor-general's court. At the time, Wrangel was occupied with one of his most famous acquisitions. The Swedish diplomat Harald Appelboom purchased twelve master paintings for him at an auction in the Hague. Among these pictures, which were to be shipped to Pomerania, were four works by Jan Steen (The Fat Meal, The Lean Meal, The Story of Hagar, and a Winterlandscape which is today at Skokloster). At this same auction, two marines were also acquired about which Wrangel expressed great enthusiasm in his correspondence, both in 1651 and later. In July and September of that same year, on his way to the baths at Spa and back, he stayed in Amsterdam and had the opportunity to see Dutch paintings, as well as Jacob van Campen's Town Hall, then still under construction. [31]

In 1652, after his return to Pomerania, his court-painter at the time, David Klöckner, painted Wrangel's now well-known equestrian portrait. Klöckner, who later became official painter at the royal Swedish court and was ennobled under the name "Ehrenstrahl", had worked as a writer at the Swedish embassy in Osnabrück during the negotiations for the Treaty of Westphalia. This above-mentioned portrait is probably the clearest expression of Wrangel's wish to be seen both as lord and war-hero. Wrangel's erstwhile court-painter, Matthäus Merian the Younger, sojourned at his former patron's residence in Wolgast during the winter of 1651-1652 and served as teacher to the young Klöckner; accordingly, we probably owe the field-marshal's likeness to the hand of the master.

We know of only one other equestrian portrait of a non-royal personage during the time of Sweden's dominance. It is a further proof of Wrangel's ambitions that it stands in the funerary chapel of the Wrangel family near the medieval church of Skokloster. The equestrian statue of Wrangel's father, Field-Marshal Herman Wrangel (d. 1643), was executed around the same time that Ehrenstrahl painted the portrait and is attributed to the stucco-master Daniel Anckermann. [32]

As governor-general of Swedish Pomerania, Wrangel resided in the old ducal palaces in Stettin and Wolgast. Otherwise, he had substantial property in Pomerania and was a very active builder of private residences. He built, for example, the splendid Wrangelsburg Castle, a palace in Stralsund, and reconstructed Spycker Castle on the island of Rügen. Due to such functions as Chancellor of the Greifswald University (starting in 1660), he also exerted a significant influence on cultural life in Pomerania. The office of governor-general was a princely function, and he was named "Father " ("Landesvater") of Pomerania. [33] In his Emblematica arcis regiae Stettinensis (1674), which he illustrated with pencil-and-wash drawings, Johann Joachim Zeuner also called him a Landesvater who ruled Pomerania with the strength of a Hercules; this happened to be in the same year as Louis XIV was acclaimed as an invincible Hercules in Versailles. [34]

The herculean Landesvater, however, remained above all a war-hero, as we can see by his participation in the Swedish wars after 1648: in Denmark and Poland in 1655-1660, the Siege of Bremen in 1666, and the war against Brandenburg in 1674. To the chorus of praise for the war-hero also belonged the portrait of of a wild boar which Wrangel killed at Eldena, near Greifswald, in 1664. In the accompanying caption, the boar expresses his satisfaction at having been slain by the well-aimed shot of this gothic Mars. [35] In a theatre piece arranged by the ex-Queen Christina in Hamburg in 1667, Wrangel appeared in the role of Geoffroy de Bouillon. In that same year, the Queen wrote to tell her friend Cardinal Azzolino in Rome that Wrangel was prepared to fight against the Turks, and that, for her sake, he would seek glory and battle to the ends of the Earth. [36] In this, Christina was probably giving a faithful rendition of Wrangel's persuasive rhetoric.

David Klöckner Ehrenstrahl later planned another pictorial homage to the general, but the project seems never to have been carried out. His concept was to depict Wrangel as both great Victor and Protector of Peace and the Muses in monumental compositions intended to decorate his Stockholm palace. [37] Which brings us to Sweden itself, where Wrangel also held high ranks; among others, as imperial admiral, and later as imperial general during Charles XIth's regency. Wrangel also conducted many building projects in his homeland, including small pleasure and hunting castles such as Ekebyhov, to the West of Stockholm, and Gripenberg, to the east of the Vätter Lake. His palace in Stockholm itself was grandiose. Yet as far as posterity is concerned, Skokloster Castle remains the clearest expression of his power and glory.



VI. Skokloster: A Memorial and Palace of Memory

The building of Skokloster began in 1654. The western section of the castle was built last and, at Wrangel's death in 1676, the greater part of its interior architecture remained unfinished. Work on the monumental banquet hall was never resumed, and it remains in an incomplete state today. For Wrangel as for Sweden, it can serve as a fitting symbol of the great ambitions that were never to be fulfilled.

The antiquated architecture in the plans - the four corner-towers and the impressive buildings around the square court with arcade-covered promenades - clearly showed Wrangel's desire to create a mighty "Stammburg", or palatial homestead. That the façades ultimately received modern forms speaks for Wrangel's characteristic split between tradition and modernity, which can also be seen in the plans elaborated for the living quarters. Wrangel had a very clear concept of the how the castle should appear, and he entrusted its construction to the architects Caspar Vogel from Erfurt, Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, and Jean de la Vallée, whose designs for the gardens were partially realised. [38]

The question concerning Skokloster's antecedents remains open. Many castles come to mind as models, but two German castles in particular are frequently mentioned: Friedenstein in Gotha and Johannisburg Castle in Aschaffenburg. Wrangel was able to see both in 1646, the year in which he gave instructions to assemble building materials for Skokloster. In April of that year, he camped with his army near Gotha and the newly-built Friedenstein Castle. In August he captured Aschaffenburg with Turenne. A statement by Johannes Loccenius, professor of Law and History at the University of Uppsala, permits special attention to be given to the castle in Aschaffenburg. In 1662, and so during Wrangel's lifetime, Loccenius very prudently allowed that the exterior of Skokloster Castle could be compared with the castle in Aschaffenburg. [39] Despite obvious differences between the two castles, Loccenius' statement is very interesting, for it can probably be retraced to Wrangel himself. Loccenius' text was intended for Erik Dahlberg's panel titled Suecia antiqua et hodierna, a project that Wrangel followed with great interest. He tried - unsuccessfully - to have the work printed by Merian's publishing house in Frankfurt, which had already published Topographia Germaniae, the model for the Suecia.

Wrangel had substantial parts of his art collection removed to Skokloster, and starting in 1665 the castle housed the greater part of his constantly growing library. Unfortunately, only a quarter of this collection has remained at Skokloster; the rest has been dispersed through inheritances. Of the 770 pictures mentioned in Wrangel's post-mortem inventory, only around 150 are still to be seen in Skokloster today. [40] On the other hand, the collection of arms and armour is complete. In his testament, Wrangel stipulated that the weapons chamber in Skokloster should remain intact for posterity. This testament confirms Wrangel's wish that Skokloster become a memorial to his military deeds in the service of Sweden. [41]

The proportion of war booty in Wrangel's possession has often been exaggerated. His purchase of artworks, objets d'art, books, navigation and measuring instruments, tools, textiles and the like in Hamburg, Amsterdam and other European centres is very well documented. [42] Nevertheless, spoils of war comprised a significant portion of his collection. The earliest-known inventory of his painting collection, drawn in September 1658 in Spycker Castle, contained some 140 items, including portraits (mostly of princes), landscapes, still lifes, and biblical subjects. [43] A number of these pictures, which had been appropriated in Denmark shortly before, may still be seen at Skokloster. Additional pieces from Danish collections arrived soon afterward: from Kronborg came five pictures with scenes from Danish history painted by Claes Moyaert, Isaac Isaacsz., Adriaen van Nieulandt, and Salomon Koninck; and from Friederiksborg, five portraits of Dutch naval heroes by Karel van Mander. [44]

In the autumn of 1658, Wrangel met two of these Dutch admirals - Opdam and Witte de Witt - in a naval engagement at Øresund, during which he vainly attempted to prevent Dutch vessels from coming to Copenhagen's assitance. An account of this defeat in Nicolaas Witsens' Aeloude en hegendaegsche scheeps-bouw en bestier (Amsterdam 1671) put Wrangel in such a rage that he demanded that it be rewritten. Thus, part of the edition offers a modified version of the events that was better suited to Wrangel's self-image as hero on land and sea. [45]

Skokloster and its collections may be considered both a great art-cabinet and a "theatre of memory". Taken as an art-cabinet, the collections and the architecture express the will to encompass the entire world, and so to dominate it. [46] Taken as a theatre of memory, the architecture of the castle worked as a great mnemonic device had designed for a man who had to order and use information coming from every part of Europe. The castle's corner-towers were topped with armillary spheres, or models of the Universe. In the most important suite of rooms, whose iconographic programme was drawn mainly from Ovid's Metamorphoses, there is a stucco ceiling-decoration executed by Hans Zauch in1663-1664 that represents the four continents and a central scene depicting legendary dragon-slayers (Apollo, or, most likely, the seafarer Jason). The distant, non-European world was represented by the exotic trees and plants in the garden, by the numerous ethnographical artifacts, and by the many travel accounts and cartographic material in the library. The overdoors of the guest-rooms were decorated with views of major European cities which gave their names to the rooms. This not only facilitated orientation within the castle, but also symbolized the desire to encompass Europe in its entirety. Seen in this way, the castle may be interpreted as an attempt to bring order into the bewildering diversity of the world. [47]

Of course, the idea of representing the world in microcosm in the floor-plan and lay-out of a building did not originate in Skokloster. An interesting point of comparison in this connection is Jacob van Campen's Town Hall in Amsterdam [48], in particular the great meeting room, which probably served as a model for Skokloster's "unfinished hall". Wrangel and Nicodemus Tessin the Elder probably undertook the detailed plans for the castle's interior in 1666. [49] As we know, having visited Amsterdam twice in 1651, Wrangel had very precise knowledge about the new Town Hall. His library, moreover, contained several books about Amsterdam with illustrations of the Town Hall which he must have ordered during the planning phase. [50]

Unlike the Amsterdam Town Hall, however, Skokloster was hardly conceived as a Temple of Peace. For a man like Wrangel, peace meant only a cease-fire. In 1666, the year he elaborated the details of the plans, he laid siege to the Free Imperial City of Bremen. Again in that year, he advocated attacks by Sweden on both Denmark and Holland. As he himself put it, "by hesitating and sitting around, one gains neither security, nor honour". [51] Nevertheless, he remained the great hero of the battles of the Thirty Years' War. A German traveller who visited Skokloster in August 1670 referred to the castle as "the splendid Schoogkloster [sic] castle, the ancestral home of the Victor". [52] Today, the castle is a museum and a theatre of memory that bears witness to the art- and book-collecting general's dreams of power and glory. Beyond that, however, Skokloster commemorates an important chapter in European history in the years before and after the Treaty of Westphalia.

FOOTNOTES