Christopher Landstedt — 1625–1750: The Baroque Period: Expansion and Ambition

Описание: Seventeenth‑century Stockholm is presented here as a city being rapidly refashioned into a Baroque capital for a rising great power. Christopher Landstedt traces how state centralisation after the 1644 Act of Government and Sweden’s geopolitical ambitions drove the demolition of the medieval walls, the rebuilding that followed the devastating 1625 fire, and the introduction of straight streets and grid plans in the Old Town. Dutch Renaissance‑inspired stone façades with rusticated plinths articulated the new mercantile and aristocratic quarters along Skeppsbron, where noble and merchant houses signalled both commercial prosperity and political rank. The lecture then moves through key aristocratic complexes – the House of Nobility, the De la Gardie and Bonde palaces, the Wrangel Palace and Nicodemus Tessin the Younger’s own palace – showing how architects used classical orders, illusionistic perspectives and carefully staged enfilades to negotiate difficult topography while projecting power. Octagonal churches such as Katarina and Hedvig Eleonora transpose central‑plan and Byzantine models into a Lutheran context. Landstedt argues that engravings and ideal views of the city capture an aspirational Stockholm, where architectural vision frequently exceeded financial and practical constraints, but nonetheless transformed a medieval market town into a Baroque capital.

Christopher Landstedt is a senior lecturer in art history at Stockholm University’s Department of Culture and Aesthetics. His research focuses on early modern visual culture, festivities and urban space in Sweden.

Key Topics
00:00 Sweden as a great power: state centralisation, the 1644 Act of Government and the decision to remake Stockholm’s medieval fabric.
01:27 Replanning after the 1625 fire: straightened streets, grid plans and Dutch Renaissance façades as tools for fire safety and representation.
02:59 The House of Nobility: multi‑stage design process, Palladian and Flemish elements, and sculpted allegories of noble virtues.
04:17 Noble palaces and illusions: De la Gardie, Bonde and Wrangel palaces with long galleries, vestibules and “false doors” to preserve symmetry.
07:08 Tessin the Younger’s own palace and the octagonal churches: Roman Baroque models, Borrominian perspective tricks and the making of a Baroque Lutheran capital.

The published anthology:
https://bokforlagetstolpe.com/en/book...

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