Karl XI:s och Nicodemus Tessin d.y:s projekt till Stockholms slottskyrka – sedda genom några predikotexter och böndagsplakat

Abstract

The Projects of King Carl XI and Nicodemus Tessin the Younger for the Royal Chapel in Stockholm – viewed through some sermons and prayer day proclamation

King Carl XI (1655–1697) implemented autocracy in Sweden and, as a deeply religious person, took control over both the kingdom and the church. During the 1690s the palace architect, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (1654–1728), drew up three proposals for a chapel within the Royal Palace in Stockholm, one of which stayed on the drawing board. The initial designs for the altar of the first project were probably all made by the sculptor Burchardt Precht (1651–1738) in cooperation with Tessin. Precht was also entrusted with the execution of the figurative parts.
Both Carl XI and Tessin had most probably been influenced by Bishop Haquin Spegel’s (1645–1714) sermons when it came to the planned chapel interior at the Palace. Three iconographic motifs took centre stage: the divine light, the sacrificial death of Jesus and the guiding presence of the Christian virtues. Tessin gave the divine light a central place by having the name of God engraved in a circular window above the altarpiece. The wrath of the Lord over the sinful lives of the people was made visible through the sacrificial lamb or through the chalice in the Garden of Gethsemane in the altarpieces, while the virtues appeared between columns around the naves as instructions on the route that members of the court congregation with the Royal couple at the head had to take. The church interior, richly adorned with columns, would support the proclamation of a strengthened joint responsibility for the prosperity of both the country and its inhabitants.