Regina Christina, Antiquario: Queen Christina of Sweden's Development of a Classical Persona Through Allegory And Antiquarian Collecting
Open Access
Author:
Kutasz Christensen, Theresa Ann
Graduate Program:
Art History
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
July 26, 2018
Committee Members:
Robin Lemuel Thomas II, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor Robin Lemuel Thomas II, Committee Chair/Co-Chair Andrew P Schulz, Committee Member Elizabeth Bradford Smith, Committee Member Sherry Lynnette Roush, Outside Member
Keywords:
Christina Sweden Art Antiquity Collector 17th century Rome
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.
