The Diffusion and Use of Emblem Books in Gotland, Pomerania and Denmark around 1700

With its more than 90 mediaeval churches, the island of Gotland bears witness to its former wealth due to its position as the nave of maritime trade in the Baltic Sea. The city of Visby was an early and independent member of the German Hanse, but in 1361, it was captured and plundered by the Danish King Valdemar IV Atterdag. The Danes never obtained total control of the island and in 1645 it was ceded to Sweden. After another brief period under Danish reign (1676–1679), Gotland was finally conceded to Sweden in 1679. The wars had left the island ravaged and impoverished, but it nevertheless maintained its trade contacts with the Hanseatic cities – and with the ports and towns of southern Jutland in Denmark and the duchy of Schleswig. During the 17th and 18th centuries a number of Gotland’s churches were furnished with emblem decorations and the article highlights two of them. In the church of Burs an emblem book by the German Heinrich Müller (1631–1675) served as a model, and there the painter may even have used a Danish edition of the German original. The church of Västerhejde boasts an exquisite western gallery from c. 1700 with an emblem decoration deriving from a recently published devotional book by Johannes Lassenius of Copenhagen. The article is about the dissemination and use of German language emblem books by artists in Sweden and Pomerania around the year 1700.