Portrait of King Carl XII of Sweden (1682-1718), three-quarter-length, in a green coat over a steel cuirass, holding a commander's baton and wearing a sword, a fortress beyond

King Carl XII succeeded to the Swedish throne in 1697 and his reign was dominated by the Great Northern War (1700-1721) in which Sweden's supremacy in the Baltic was challenged by an alliance which included Russia, Denmark and Poland, which finally ended with the Treaty of Nystad and the Stockholm Treaties. This portrait relates, with notable variations, to a three-quarter-length portrait of King Carl XII in the National Museum, Stockholm. The Stockholm portrait is dated circa 1700-1710 and is believed to have been ordered by the Swedish envoy in London, Count Karl Gyllenborg, and painted after a sculpture (W. Nisser, Michael Dahl and the Contemporary Swedish School of Painting in England, Uppsala, 1927, pp. 11-2, pl. XXXVI).