Catherine the Great’s Danish Portraitist: Projecting Majesty across the Baltic Sea

This chapter considers the Baltic Sea as a unique conduit for Russia’s transcultural exchange, with all the imperialist rivalry that this entailed. It takes as its case study a handful of portraits that the Danish artist Vigilius Eriksen painted for Catherine the Great in the 1760s and ‘70s, and the way in which their circulation and display enabled the empress to become arguably the most efficient ruler of her generation to foster a personal iconography that announced and then cemented her eminence on the European stage. Tracing the trajectories of Eriksen’s portraits reveals a commanding nexus between political ascendency, international relations, and visual imagery, and the function of paintings as highly charged conductors of regal clout around the Baltic Sea. Collectively, they engaged with power differentials in highly suggestive ways, confirming the vitality with which portraiture constructed and signalled status and authority between some of the Baltic’s most competitive courts.