Configuring Virtue: The Emergence of Abstraction, Allegoresis and Emblem in Swedish Figural Sculpture of the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

This article concerns evidence of Renaissance cultural forms finding purchase in the visual arts of early-modern Sweden, specifically as expressed in the figural sculpture of the seventeenth century. Traceable to stylistic innovations introduced by migrant stone-carvers from the Netherlands, new thematic elements from the realm of humanistic abstraction became established tropes within the native sculptural tradition. Taking figural representations of the Cardinal and Theological Virtues as an area of particular focus, the article demonstrates how these traditional topoi were for the first time naturalized as familiar elements in the decorative programmes of churches and memorial chapels. Their deployment in such contexts can be seen as evidence of a widening of the visual repertoire in the light of European cultural developments, and a new consciousness of the rhetorical power of persuasio among the commissioning patrons of such works from the emerging political and cultural elite.