RKD STUDIES

At the north end of the ground-floor Christian IV established his private quarters, comprising a bedroom, a living room called the Winter Room and a small Writing Room or Studiolo , which only can be entered through an invisible door in the Winter Room. It is a small cabinet with paintings laid into the low wainscoting as they were conceived in 1616-1620. Christian IV had his writing chamber lavishly decorated with grotesques and ornamental arabesques. He was familiar with this idiom from his childhood. The large series of 43 Flemish tapestries that his father Frederick II commissioned by Hans Knieper (†1587) [1] in 1581-1585 display in their borders an elaborate use of this particular form of decoration. The upper-tier was probably decorated with gilded leather wall hangings.

1
tapestry workshop of Hans Knieper
Frederick II (1534-1588) with his son Prince Christian (1577-1648) in front of Frederiksborg Castle and Kronborg Castle, 1585
Copenhagen, National Museum of Denmark

The richly carved, panelled ceiling contains six small paintings. The central decoration shows Angelica and Medoro carving their initials in a tree [2], a subject from Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.¹ There is uncertainty about the identity of the painter of this work; it has been attributed to Frantz Klein (1582-1658) and hypothetically to Søren Kiær (active 1609-1630); both painters had just returned from Italy in 1617.² The composition is based on an engraving by Aegidius Sadeler (c. 1570-1629) [3] after a painting by Carlo Caliari (1570–1596), now in the National Gallery in Prague [4].³

2
Frantz Klein or possibly Søren Kiær after Aegidius Sadeler (II) after Carlo Caliari
Angelica and Medoro carving their names in the tree trunk, 1618-1623
Copenhagen, The Royal Danish Collection - Rosenborg Castle

A series of paintings in the wainscoting show female busts as well as the Bust of a man [5]. Juliette Roding recently discovered that the latter was designed after a woodcut of Christoffel van Sichem I after a drawing by Hendrick Goltzius dated 1607, which once was thought to represent Count Otto Heinrich of Schwartzenberg [6-7].⁴ The female busts, some of which have an allegorical meaning (Hope, Faith and Love), seem to be based on prints as well, although no specific example has been identified yet [8-14].

5
Anonymous Denmark 1616-1623 free after Christoffel van Sichem (I) after Hendrick Goltzius
Bust of a man with a fur cap and coat and a golden necklace, 1616-1623
Copenhagen, The Royal Danish Collection - Rosenborg Castle

6
Christoffel van Sichem (I) after Hendrick Goltzius
Portrait of a man, dated 1607
Sydney (Australia), Art Gallery of New South Wales, inv./cat.nr. 386.1977

7
Hendrick Goltzius
Portrait of a man, dated 1607
Los Angeles (California), Malibu (California), J. Paul Getty Museum, inv./cat.nr. 94.GA.49

Furthermore we encounter painted dogs [15-16] and a human face constructed out of kitchen utensils, bearing the inscription ‘CVCINA’ and executed after a print after Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) [17-18].⁵ The famous Italian painter worked in Vienna as a court painter to the emperors Maximilian II as well as to Rudolph II in Prague, where he painted a series of heads constructed out of plants, fruits, flowers and naturalia. Thanks to the frequent artistic contacts between these central European cities and Copenhagen, Christian IV was able to decorate his Studiolo in a similar fashion.⁶

Just as in the case of the paintings in the ceiling, we do not know for sure who was or were the artist(s) who made the paintings in the wainscot and the window niches of this room, although they traditionally have been attributed to Frantz Klein.

16
possibly Frantz Klein
A greyhound lying in the courtyard of a farm, with a henhouse in the background, 1616-1620 or 1618-1623
Copenhagen, The Royal Danish Collection - Rosenborg Castle