Warship Vasa : Sculptures

On the 10th of August 1628 the Royal Warship Vasa, newly-built and fitted, sank in Stockholm's harbour on its maiden voyage. What had once seemed a catastrophe has come to appear a happy event in our own times. When the Vasa sank she carried with her to the bottom a microcosm of seventeenth-century society. Anders Franzén's rediscovery of the Vasa in 1956 and the efficient salvage operation in 1961 has made it possible to exhibit a segment of maritime cultural history from a long departed epoch. Today the Warship Vasa remains one of this country's greatest tourist attractions. For art historians the approximately 700 sculptured figures and ornamental objects that were found offer a vast and rewarding material for study. It is this latter material upon which this book is focused.