Portret van Gustav II Adolf (1594-1632), koning van Zweden
in or after c. 1633
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
4; 39.1; 28.3
About this artwork
oil on panel
Art Historical Context
This posthumous portrait captures Gustav II Adolf, the celebrated Swedish king who shaped European history during the Thirty Years’ War. Painted in or after 1633 by Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, one of the leading Dutch portraitists of the Golden Age, the work commemorates a monarch who had died on the battlefield the previous year. Van Mierevelt, based in Delft, was renowned for his precise, dignified likenesses of European nobility, and this small panel likely served as a commemorative image for Dutch or Swedish patrons who admired the king’s Protestant cause. Executed in oil on panel, the c...
About the Artist
Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt · 1567–1641
Son of the goldsmith Jan Michielsen van Miereveldt and a pupil (when he was 12 years old) of Antonio Blocklandt (known as Montfort) in Utrecht and later of Willem Willemsz. It is very difficult to distinguish his work from the innumerable copies of his paintings that he allowed to be made, even sometimes signing them with his own name. Basically a portrait painter, he also painted historical and ...