TY - JOUR
TI - Catherine the Great’s Danish Portraitist: Projecting Majesty across the Baltic Sea
AU - Blakesley, Rosalind P.
TI - Catherine the Great’s Danish Portraitist: Projecting Majesty across the Baltic Sea
AB - 
	This chapter considers the Baltic Sea as a unique conduit for Russia’s transcultural exchange, with all the imperialist rivalry that this entailed. It takes as its case study a handful of portraits that the Danish artist Vigilius Eriksen painted for Catherine the Great in the 1760s and ‘70s, and the way in which their circulation and display enabled the empress to become arguably the most efficient ruler of her generation to foster a personal iconography that announced and then cemented her eminence on the European stage. Tracing the trajectories of Eriksen’s portraits reveals a commanding nexus between political ascendency, international relations, and visual imagery, and the function of paintings as highly charged conductors of regal clout around the Baltic Sea. Collectively, they engaged with power differentials in highly suggestive ways, confirming the vitality with which portraiture constructed and signalled status and authority between some of the Baltic’s most competitive courts.
VL - 2022
IS - Tom 13 (2022)
PY - 2022
SN - 2081-3309
C1 - 2391-6001
SP - 162
EP - 177
DO - 10.4467/23916001HG.22.011.17431
UR - https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/studia-historica-gedanensia/artykul/catherine-the-greats-danish-portraitist-projecting-majesty-across-the-baltic-sea
KW - Catherine the Great
KW - Vigilius Eriksen
KW - Russia
KW - Denmark
KW - portraiture