Gustav Vasa's Entry into Stockholm 1523

Carl Larsson is best loved for sunlit watercolours of his own family and farmhouse, so this is a surprise: a history painting seven metres tall filling the main staircase of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. He finished it in 1908, after years of lobbying to be allowed to start. The scene is the summer of 1523, the day Gustav Vasa rides into Stockholm to be made king, the moment Swedes mark as the birth of their country as an independent kingdom free of Danish rule. Larsson packs the walls with townsfolk, banners and horses under a bright northern sky. He wanted to close the cycle with a darker winter scene of a king sacrificing himself, and that later panel, Midvinterblot, was rejected and became the most argued-over painting in Sweden.