Доставка тела короля Швеции Карла XII на родину

Sweden lost its warrior-king Charles XII in November 1718, shot in the trenches at the siege of Fredriksten in Norway, and with him the country's age as a great European power came to an end. Gustaf Cederstrom painted this scene of soldiers carrying the dead king home through the snow more than 160 years later, in a time of strong Swedish feeling about that lost past. This is actually his second version. The first, from 1878, was so admired that his supporters raised 11,000 kronor to persuade him to paint another for the national collection in Stockholm. Cederstrom mixed history with feeling. The king was really brought back in a coffin on a wagon, not on an open bier, and to get the body right the painter had an Italian model lie on a stretcher out in the cold.