Abstract
The Hohenzollern Princess Lovisa Ulrika of Prussia, younger sister to Frederick the Great, received an unusually advanced education, in keeping with the tenets of the Enlightenment before her marriage to Crown Prince Adolf Fredrik of Holstein-Gottorp in 1743 and arrival in Sweden in1744. Both the courts of Prussia and Holstein-Gottorp had established traditions of collecting. While Lovisa Ulrika as an aristocratic woman used her collections, including plants, insects and shells, as a means of dynastic representation, she also nurtured an active intellectual interest in natural science and philosophy as is attested by her correspondence and her patronage of Carl Linnaeus. As princess and queen, she displayed her collection at Drottningholm Palace with a view to presenting herself as a philosophe and patron of the natural sciences. Her collections were published during her lifetime by Linnaeus while specimens of her collections continue to make contributions to scientific research into the twenty-first century.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Barton, H. Arnold. 1972. “Gustav III of Sweden and the Enlightenment.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 6, no.1: 1–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/3031560.
Bell, Christopher. J., ed. 2012. “The Herpetological Legacy of Linnaeus: A Celebration of the Linnaean Tercentenary.” Bibliotheca Herpetologica 9, no. 1–2: 98–103.
Bencard, Mogens, Jørgen Hein, Bente Gundestrup, and Jan Drees, eds. 1997. Gottorf im Glanz des Barock. Kunst und Kultur am Schleswiger Hof 1544–1713, Vol. II. Schleswig: Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmusem.
Blanning, Tim. 2015. Frederick the Great: King of Prussia. London: Allen Lane Publications.
Bracken, Susan, Andrea M. Gáldy and Adriana Turpin, eds. 2022 Collecting and Access. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Brown, Gregory. n.d. Dept of Philosophy, University of Houston, Website on G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716). http://www.gwleibniz.com/sophie_charlotte/sophie_charlotte.html. Access 28 November 2020.
Dermineur, Elise M. 2017. Gender and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Sweden. Queen Louisa Ulrika (1720–1782). New York: Routledge.
Detlefsen, Karen. 2018. “Émilie du Châtelet.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Fell, F. Julian. 1974. “The Echinoids of Easter Island (Rapa Nui).” Pacific Science 28, no. 2: 147–58.
Findlen, Paula. 2012. “Uffizi Gallery, Florence: The Rebirth of a Museum in the Eighteenth Century.” In The First Modern Museums of Art: The Birth of an Institution in 18th- and Early 19th-Century Europe, ed. Carole Paul, 73–111. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Gentry, Anthea. 2008. “Linnaeus’ Specimens of Mammals and Birds.” In The Linnaean Legacy: Three Centuries after His Birth, The Linnaean Special Issue No. 8, ed. Mary J. Morris and Leonie Berwick, 145–52. London: The Linnaean Society of London.
Grate, Pontus. 1994. French Paintings II: Eighteenth Century. Stockholm: Swedish National Art Museums.
Hämäläinen, Matti, and Albert G. Orr. 2017. “From Princess Lovisa Ulrika to the Gyalsey, Dragon Prince of Bhutan—Royalty in dragonfly names from 1746 to 2017.” Agrion 21, no. 2: 61–71.
Harbers, Anne. 2014. “Carl Linnaeus and the Natural History Collections of Lovisa Ulrika of Sweden at Drottningholm Palace.” In Collecting Nature, ed. Andrea M. Galdy and Sylvia Heudecker, 137–50. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Harbers, Anne, and Andrea Gáldy. 2021. “Science, Gender and Collecting: The Dutch Eighteenth-Century Ladies’ Society for Physical Sciences of Middelburg.” In Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth Century Europe, ed. Arlene Leis and Kacie L. Willis, 21–38. New York: Routledge.
Heard, Kate. 2016. Maria Merian’s Butterflies. London: Royal Collection Trust.
Jansen, Justin. 2015. “The Bird Collection of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France: The First Years (1793–1825).” Journal of the National Museum (Prague), Natural History Series 184, no. 5: 81–111.
Jarvis, Charlie, and Phillip Cribb. 2009. “Linnaean Sources and Concepts of Orchids.” Annals of Botany 104, no. 3: 365–76. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcp005. Accessed 14 October 2018
Koerner, Lisbet. 1999. Linnaeus: Nature and Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kohn, Alan J. 2014. Conus of the Southeastern United States and Caribbean. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Laine, Merit. 1998a. “En Minerva för vår Nord: Lovisa Ulrika som samlare, uppdragsgivare och byggherre: [Queen Lovisa Ulrika, Her Collections and Commissions of Art and Architecture].” PhD diss., Uppsala University, Sweden.
Laine, Merit. 1998b. “An Eighteenth-Century Minerva: Lovisa Ulrika and Her Collections at Drottningholm Palace 1744–1777.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 31, no. 4: 493–503.
Lindkvist, Maria. 2016. “The Importance of Curation: A Case-Study of the Subfossil Lemur Collection in the Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University.” PhD diss., Uppsala University, Sweden.
Linnebach, Andrea. 2016. “Das Publikum der Antiken: Kunsthaus und Museum Fridericianum in Kassel als Ziel von Bildungs- und Forschungsreisen der europäischen Aufklärung.” In Auf dem Weg zum Museum. Sammlung und Präsentation antiker Kunst an Deutschen Fürstenhöfen des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Alexis Joachimides, Charlotte Schreiter, and Rüdiger Splitter, 191–210. Kassel: Kassel University Press.
Lovén, Sven L. 1887. On the Species of Echinoidea Described by Linnaeus in His Work Museum Ludovicae Ulricae, in a Communication to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 11 May 1887. Re-printed on demand by Bibliolife, June 2019.
Mates, Benson. 1986. The Philosophy of Leibniz: Metaphysics and Language. New York: Oxford University Press.
Moberg, Roland. 2008. “The Linnaean Collections at Uppsala University.” In The Linnaean Legacy: Three Centuries after his Birth, The Linnean Special Issue No 8, ed. Mary J. Morris and Leonie Berwick, 141–44. London: The Linnaean Society of London.
Müller, Adelheid. 2016. “Strategie und Leidenschaft: Weibliche Wege zur Antikensammlung.” In Auf dem Weg zum Museum. Sammlung und Präsentation antiker Kunst an Deutschen Fürstenhöfen des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Alexis Joachimides, Charlotte Schreiter, and Rüdiger Splitter, 211–41. Kassel: Kassel University Press.
Nordenstam, Bertil. 2009. “Linnaeus’s Global Project – The Exploration of the World’s Flora.” Rheedea 19, no. 1–2: 1–22.
Pulteney, Richard. 1805. A General View of the Writings of Linneaus, ed. William George Maton. London: Royal College of Physicians of London.
Rea Radisich, Paula. 2003. “Lovisa Ulrika of Sweden, Chardin and Enlightened Despotism.” In Women, Art and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Melissa Lee Hyde and Jennifer Dawn Milam, 46–63. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Reid, Callum. 2021. Collecting and Display in the Uffizi Gallery: Art in the Age of the Grand Dukes. Routledge.
Rivière, Marc Serge. 2003. “‘Divine Ulrique’: Voltaire and Louisa Ulrica, Princess of Prussia and Queen of Sweden (1751–1771).” Irish Journal of French Studies 3: 41–62. https://doi.org/10.7173/164913303818644432. Accessed 5 August 2018
Rivière, Marc Serge. 2004. “The Pallas of Stockholm, Louisa Ulrika of Prussia and the Swedish Crown.” In Queenship in Europe 1660–1815: the Role of the Consort, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr, 322–43. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Roberts, Michael. 1986. The Age of Liberty Sweden 1719–1772. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Söderlund, Inga Elmqvist. 2008. “The Cabinet of Naturalia of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at the End of the 18th Century.” NaMu IV, http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/030/015/ecp0830015.pdf. Accessed 13 October 2018
Strickland, Lloyd, ed. 2011. Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence. Toronto, Ont.: Victoria University.
Svanberg, Ingvar. 2007. “Golden Pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus) in Sweden in the 1740s.” Der Zoologische Garten 77, no. 2: 24–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zoolgart.2007.05.003. Accessed 14 October 2018.
Svanberg, Ingvar. 2016. “Carl Linnaeus as an Aviculturalist.” Avicultural Magazine 122: 53–58.
Swan, Claudia. 2007. “Collecting Naturalia in the Shadow of Early Modern Dutch Trade.” In Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, ed. Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, 223–36 Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Taylor, Brandon. 2012. “National Gallery, London: For ‘All Ranks and degrees of men.’” In The First Modern Museums of Art: the Birth of an Institution in 18th- and Early 19th-Century Europe, ed. Carole Paul, 282–303. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Treasures from Inside the Earth. Exhibition Catalogue (2001–2002). The Swedish Museum of Natural History.
Vane-Wright, Dick. 2010. “Papilio enceladus Linnaeus, 1758.” The Linnean 26, no. 3: 12–18.
Vasari, Giorgio. 1881. Le Opere con nuove annotazioni e commenti, vol. VI, ed. Gaetano Milanesi. Sansoni Editore.
Way, Kathie. 2007. “The Linnaean Shell Collection at Burlington House.” In The Linnaean Special Issue No 7, ed. Brian Gardiner and Mary J. Morris, 37–46. London: The Linnaean Society of London.
Whitehead, Jane S. 1983. “‘The noblest Collection of Curiositys’: British Visitors to the Uffizi, 1650‒1789.” In Gli Uffizi, quattro secoli di una galleria: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Firenze 20–24 settembre 1982, vol. I, ed. Paola Barocchi, Giovanna Ragionieri, 287–307. Florence: L.S. Olschki.
Acknowledgements
Our thanks go to Kerstin Hagsgård of The Royal Court, Sweden, Isabelle Charmantier of the Linnean Society of London, Maria Asp of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences archives, and Jan Over for translations from the French.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harbers, A.E., Gáldy, A.M. (2022). Queen Lovisa Ulrika of Sweden (1720–1782): Philosophe and Collector. In: Jones, C.G., Martin, A.E., Wolf, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78973-2_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78973-2_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-78972-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-78973-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)