Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden

Gustav Adolf is shown half length, face to the right. The King is bare-headed with a high forehead, a pointed beard on his cheek. He is dressed in an armour with a broad white bobbin laced collar falling over his shoulders and across his breast he carries a blue field band – the field marshals sign - trimmed with laces of gold. The panel has a joint vertically in the middle covered by a retouching. It is not signed.

The Flemish painter Jacob Hoefnagel is mostly known as a skilled portrait miniature painter and also as a copper engraver. Before he arrived in Sweden in the early 1620s he had been employed by the emperor Rudolph II in Prague. His style is very precise, though this portrait is not a miniature painting of Gustav Adolf it still has all of its qualities, a detailed and distinct pencil gives a very god characterization of the model.