Hur Sturarnas gravmonument i Uppsala skulle göras

Abstract

Summary A Design for the Tomb of the Sture Family in Uppsala Cathedral After the Reformation the medieval chapels in Uppsala Cathedral were taken into use as burial places for the royal family and the nobility. The tomb of Gustav Vasa and two of his wives was executed by the Flemish artist William Boy († 1592), who was employed in Sweden for a long time. William Boy also made a design for a grave monument for the noble family of Sture, after three of its members, fallen into singular disgrace with Erik XIV, had been murdered by his instigation and in his presence in Uppsala Castle in 1567. From a memorandum dated 1603 and written by the Privy Councillor Hogenskild Bielke († 1605), married to a member of the Sture family, we can gather how the drawing must have looked that William Boy made for a grave monument over the Sture family so suddenly afflicted. A copy of this memorandum still exists. The grave monument was to be erected in the fine chapel on the north side of the chancel, between the so‐called Finsta Chapel, where Saint Birgitta's parents are buried, and the royal Jagellonian burial chapel. On the tomb five people in full figure were to rest, four knights in armour and a lady, Märta Leijonhufvud, the wife of Svante Sture, Constable of the Realm. The tomb was to go with a sculptural wall arrangement crowned by a picture of the Saviour. The memorandum contains careful instructions as to how each detail of the monument was to be executed: the various types of stone to be used, the painting, the gilding, the way the armour, helmets and gloves were to be represented. Mention is made of putti carrying a skull and an hour‐glass, symbols that also decorate Gustav Vasa's tomb in the Vasa Chapel. The back wall was to have a stately portrayal of the Sture family with the sons in a row after the Count and the daughters behind the Countess, the whole surrounded by the coats of arms of the Sture and Leijonhufvud families. The most detailed part of Bielke's memorandum concerns cer‐tain plaques to be made in relief presenting in greatest detail situations and people at the time the murder was committed. If one takes into account the great interest these pictures would have awakened in their own time and later, it is obvious that they would have been of unique historical and iconographical value if they had been executed. But this was not to be. The wall epitaph in marble and alabaster that now adorns the west wall of the Sture Chapel was made by the master Heinrich Wilhelm and set up around the middle of the seventeenth century.