Uploaded May 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Title:Descriptions of collections and their display at the Stuart Court in 1669 in a manuscript account of Prince George of Denmark's Grand Tour (1668–1670)
Speaker: Dr Sara Ayres (Fellow at the Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen)
When George of Denmark (1653-1708), later Prince Consort to Anne, Queen of Great Britain (1665-1714), was fourteen years old, Christen Jensen Lodberg (1625-1693) was contracted by his father, Frederik III of Denmark, to educate him. After two years of tuition in Denmark, two years were spent travelling in Europe, visiting the great cities, cathedrals, courts and collections of France, England and Italy. On the party's return home, Lodberg wrote an account of the journey in two volumes. Danish is a language not widely learned or spoken outside of the Nordic region and so the narratives in this fascinating manuscript have remained locked up for three centuries.
Prince George brought a copy of the diary with him to the UK upon his marriage, where it eventually entered the collections of the British Library.
The manuscript contains detailed inventories of objects, paintings and works of art George and his suite saw at Greenwich, the Tradescant Collection, the Tower of London, Oxford University, Hampton Court Palace, Westminster Abbey and St George's Chapel at Windsor. Lodberg makes little distinction between art and science, but there appears to be some emphasis laid in his programme on new technology and feats of innovation in printing, painting, armaments and automata. How did these objects participate in the education of a Danish prince and in the formation of his princely identity? What does the diary tell us about collections' and objects' status as repositories of knowledge during the seventeenth century?
Title:Descriptions of collections and their display at the Stuart Court in 1669 in a manuscript account of Prince George of Denmark's Grand Tour (1668–1670)
Speaker: Dr Sara Ayres (Fellow at the Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen)
When George of Denmark (1653-1708), later Prince Consort to Anne, Queen of Great Britain (1665-1714), was fourteen years old, Christen Jensen Lodberg (1625-1693) was contracted by his father, Frederik III of Denmark, to educate him. After two years of tuition in Denmark, two years were spent travelling in Europe, visiting the great cities, cathedrals, courts and collections of France, England and Italy. On the party's return home, Lodberg wrote an account of the journey in two volumes. Danish is a language not widely learned or spoken outside of the Nordic region and so the narratives in this fascinating manuscript have remained locked up for three centuries.
Prince George brought a copy of the diary with him to the UK upon his marriage, where it eventually entered the collections of the British Library.
The manuscript contains detailed inventories of objects, paintings and works of art George and his suite saw at Greenwich, the Tradescant Collection, the Tower of London, Oxford University, Hampton Court Palace, Westminster Abbey and St George's Chapel at Windsor. Lodberg makes little distinction between art and science, but there appears to be some emphasis laid in his programme on new technology and feats of innovation in printing, painting, armaments and automata. How did these objects participate in the education of a Danish prince and in the formation of his princely identity? What does the diary tell us about collections' and objects' status as repositories of knowledge during the seventeenth century?
