PRIVACY Scholars Mette Birkedal Bruun and Lars Cyril Nørgaard will give papers at symposium at Frederiksborg Castle

PRIVACY Centre Director Mette Birkedal Bruun and PRIVACY Scholar Lars Cyril Nørgaard will both attend and give papers the symposium Cosmopolitianism, Cultural Exchange, Performing Arts, and Transnational History between France and Danmark (1660-1800). 

Mette Birkedal Bruuns paper is titled 'Jacques-Bénigne Winsløw (Winslow): A Dane in Paris.'

In 1697, the Danish anatomist Jakob Winsløw (1669-1760) arrived in Paris via Amsterdam and Leiden. He had been sent abroad by Mathias Moth, counsellor of Christian V, in order to deepen his knowledge of anatomy and surgery before returning to a chair in Copenhagen.

Winsløw was, however, to stay in Paris for the rest of his life. In 1699, he converted to Catholicism, thus forfeiting his access to a Danish career. His Catholic name, Jacques-Bénigne Winslow, reflects the role played by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, bishop of Meaux in his conversion together with the prominent printer Desprez. Winsløw became a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1708 and ended his career with a chair of medicine and surgery at the Jardin du Roi as a principal propagator of the new vogue of descriptive anatomy.

Winsløw’s conversion, incited by readings of Arnauld and Bossuet, put him at the centre of different forms of debates and activities in Denmark and France respectively. In Denmark, Winsløw’s father, a Lutheran minister, responded with epistolary attempts to sway his son by theological arguments, eventually involving a professor of theology from the University of Copenhagen. In France, in turn, Winsløw navigated a religious landscape that included stays with Bossuet in Meaux, a retreat with the Oratorians as well as excursions to the abbeys of La Trappe and Port-Royal des Champs. Winsløw’s memoirs of his arrival in Paris, his ensuing conversion and its aftermath as well as the letters written to and about him in Denmark and France offer a glimpse of the life of a Dane in Paris: of the diplomatic, scientific and religious circumstances of an itinerant erudite as well as some of the practicalities regarding lodging and socializing. Using Winsløw as the lens, this presentation looks at Danish-French connections and disconnections in the realms of science and religion around 1700.

Lars Cyril Nørgaard's paper is titled 'The King's Portrait in the Danish Royal Kunstkammer.'

Between 1550 and 1650, cabinets of curiosities were a common feature in the Germanic territories. Already the Danish kings Frederik II (1534-1588) and Christian IV (1577-1648)
envisioned such spaces: it is, however, Frederik III (1609-1670), whose name has become synonymous with the Royal Danish Kunstkammer. Initially, this collection was located in the King’s apartments in Copenhagen Castle. Later, a plan developed to move the Kunstkammer to the second floor of a three-storey building that stood opposite to the Castle. From 1673, the first floor housed the Royal Library, while the Armoury occupied the ground floor. Postponed by Frederik’s death, the Kunstkammer was not transferred until some time during the 1680s. Indeed, Christian V (1646-1699) turned his focus away from his father’s initial plan and focused on Rosenborg that, during his reign, was extensively elaborated and became almost a treasure chamber in its own right.
Nevertheless, Christian V plays an important role in the history of the Danish Kunstkammer.

In 1687, he ordered Holger Jacobæus (1650-1701) to draft its inventory: the manuscript of this inventory is signed and sealed on 28 November 1690; it takes up a little more than three hundred and fifty pages. On the follow blank pages, Jacobæus has noted the occasional objects that were later added to the Kunstkammer. In August 1694, portraits of Louis XIV and his Queen are thus mentioned. Together with a portrait of the Dauphin de France, these paintings became part of the collection of Statens Museum for Kunst. Today, they hang at Amalienborg. What is the history of these paintings? What motivated their initially donation? How did they, in August 1694, reproduce a certain myth of Louis XIV as the ideal monarch?  My presentation proposes to investigate these topics, while also calling into question the ascription of the king’s portrait to Pierre Mignard (1612-1695).

Registration to Executive Secretary Mette Carstensen (mc@dnm.dk) by 31st May 2019.