Templet i Mälby
Abstract
The Temple in Mälby
In the mid 1780s the count, naval officer, and architect Carl August Ehrensvärd (1745–1800) designed the main building and surrounding gardens at Mälby estate (Gnesta, Sweden). Ehrensvärd’s close friend, the high-ranking civil servant Johan Gustaf von Carlson (1743–1801), was the owner of the estate who commissioned the project. A number of buildings were erected in the ambitiously planned landscape garden, among them a Greek temple, a full-scale reconstruction of the Temple of Theseus in Athens (today known as the Temple of Hephaestus). This temple was one of the first examples of pure neoclassical architecture in Sweden. The aim of the article is to place the temple in a contemporary philosophical, literary, and artistic context, as well as to draw some conclusions about its erection, design and social function. Because the building has long since disappeared, the source material available today includes guidebooks, sketches, letters, and research conducted in the fields of literature, art, and gender studies.
Since 2013, 1700-tal publishes all content online, currently with a one-year delay after the printed version is distributed.
Copyright on any content in 1700-tal is retained by the author(s).
Authors grant 1700-tal a license to publish their contributions in print and online or any other medium and to identify itself as the original publisher.
Authors give 1700-tal the right to distribute their contributions freely under a Creative Commons Attribution License. This implies that any third party has the right to use the contribution freely, provided that its original author(s), citation details and publisher are identified.
For more information on the Creative Commons Attribution License see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Authors have the right to self-archive their contribution in its final form (publisher’s PDF) as soon as the printed version has been distributed.