House Garden 
the curved wall being pierced by three niches, 
in one of which stands the bed. The benches 
fixed to the wall are painted green; pilasters, 
triglyphs and certain mouldings in blue and 
white ; the remaining woodwork of ordinary 
pine, has through the action of time assumed 
a tone of golden brown. On the panels of 
the wainscot are painted ornamental arrange¬ 
ments of leaves, fruit, and flowers springing 
from vases, alternating with which are blaz¬ 
oned highly decorative coats - of- arms of 
Swedish nobles. On the walls above the 
wainscot, and on the ceiling, there are deli¬ 
cate arabesques strongly reminiscent of their 
Italian origin. Gripsholm was but the first 
of three great castles built by Gustavus 
Vasa, of which Wadstena (1545) and Upsala 
( 1 549 ) were the others. To Gustavus also 
was due much work upon The Castle of 
Kalmar , and although its general plan had 
been settled long before his time, much of its 
present character is due to his activity and to 
that of his two sons, Eric XIV. and John 
HI. Its characteristically Teutonic skyline 
must have been due to the master mechanics 
in charge of it, many of whom bore Ger¬ 
man names, one having come from Freiburg 
and another from Mecklenburg. Indeed 
much of the work of the Renaissance in 
Sweden, both early and late, is lacking in 
local character, its designers having in most 
cases come directly from the south, a very 
considerable number of them from the Neth¬ 
erlands. 
It is perhaps among the houses of the 
nobility that one can best study the changes 
in style that the architecture of the Renais¬ 
sance underwent in its early days. In such 
an example as The Castle of Tor up, built 
about 1576, one sees, in spite of a modern¬ 
ization that has enlarged many of the windows, 
a stronghold well calculated, with the aid of 
its moat, toward off an attack of considerable 
vigor. In The Castle of Svenstorp , built but 
twenty years later, the type of structure has 
undergone a remarkable change. Defence is 
2 5 
