Valdemar Atterdag mettant Visby à rançon

In the summer of 1361 the Danish king Valdemar the Fourth stormed the walls of Visby, the rich trading town on the Baltic island of Gotland, and set three great beer vats in its main square. Fill them with gold and silver, was the demand, or the town burns. The merchants are said to have done it in under a day. Hellqvist painted this scene in Munich in the 1880s, five centuries after the fact, and he built it like a stage, the conqueror on horseback, the townspeople bent over the barrels, a crowd watching from the shadows. Look to the left vat and you will find a dachshund at the citizens' feet, one of several details that belong to the painter's own century rather than to 1361.