Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz

[3] He came into the employment of Nicodemus Tessin the Younger in 1697, the year the disastrous fire at the old Castle of Stockholm took place and the planning for the new palace began.

[4] Göran Josua Adelcrantz remained in the shadow of the dominant Tessin; his most significant work was the cupola for the Katarina Church in Stockholm.

[5] Through his marriage in 1711 to the young widow Anna Maria Köhnmann, daughter of a wealthy businessman, Törnqvist's finances improved considerably.

[16] Adelcrantz would remain in the shadow of Hårleman for several years more, spending the 1740s as his assistant in the work on the Royal Palace in Stockholm that had been under continuous construction since the old Castle burnt down in 1697.

The stay in Italy was a failure as far as recruiting new artists went, as the ones he wanted turned out to be far to expensive, but gave a rich yield in the form of architectural notes, books and art objects.

Adelcrantz and Roslin may already have met in Stockholm before the latter left for the continent, or in Italy a few years before, but the stay in Paris appears to have been the beginning of a long friendship and an extensive but now-lost correspondence.

[23] As a member of the Hats, one of the two dominant groups of the Swedish parliamentary system of the Age of Liberty, he briefly became a target of political bad-will from the side of the other party, the Caps, after their rise to power in the Riksdag of 1771.

The coup d'état of the new king, Gustav III, spared him the political fate his father may once have feared for him, and he could undisturbed continue his work both as an architect and as a civil servant.

The Academy of Arts received new statutes in 1773, and in 1776 the King granted the office of the överintendent a more complete control of all public building in the country, both as a result of Adelcrantz's initiative.

The petition was refused by the King; only in 1795 was Adelcrantz given permission to retire as överintendent, leaving the reins to his successor, Carl Fredrik Fredenheim, on 16 February.

[30] Adelcrantz' first commissions of significance were the Ulriksdal Palace Theatre and the residential building in Stockholm that he originally designed for his brother-in-law Gustaf Samuel Ruuth (but would later take over himself), both from 1753, the year of Hårleman's death.