page_title: Michael Dahl
section_title: Paris and Rome
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Dahl / Travels / Paris and Rome
context_page_description: Michael Dahl was a Swedish portrait painter who lived and worked in England most of his career and died there. He was one of the most internationally known Swedish painters of his time. He painted portraits of many aristocrats and some members of royal families, such as Queen Anne of Great Britain, Prince George of Denmark and the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden.
context_section_description: Lack of documentation makes it impossible to determine when Dahl and Henry Tilson left for Paris, but it is known that they were still working in Paris in April 1685. Paris at that time was a common objective for Swedish travelers. Dahl came in contact with the engraver Raimund Faltz and the Swedish soldier Carl Johan Königsmarck, who had his portrait painted by Dahl. Like many of the younger generation of French painters, Dahl and Tilson decided to continue on to Venice then Rome. At that time, the  Swedish queen Christina, who had abdicated to convert to Roman Catholicism, was living in Rome.  She still had a strong bond to Sweden and its people and was helpful when it came to assisting Swedish artists in the city. Therefore, the first thing Dahl did upon his arrival  was to seek an audience with her. He was able to get the audience, but Christina was only a link to the higher powers in the city, such as the Pope, so to get the assistance Dahl needed from Christina, Dahl had to convert to the Roman Catholic Church as she had done. After some persuasion he eventually did, but the promises which were undoubtedly made to him were not withheld.  At several occasions, Christina let Dahl paint her portrait and she was able to establish an opportunity for Dahl to show a specimen of his work to Pope Innocent XI. The Pope was impressed and awarded Dahl a gold medal. Dahl was not the only artist Christina was able to convert. David Richter the Elder who Dahl had studied with at Ehrenstrahl's, was converted when he visited Rome a few years earlier, in 1679.
  Dahl had now been traveling for over five years, and his purse was getting thin. On 6 October 1687 he wrote a letter to his mother; in it he expresses his strong desire to return home, but that the conditions in Sweden are too poor due to the Swedish Resumption/Patents act, which restricted all possibilities of a career in Sweden for Dahl. Christina seems to have given her consent, as a passport for a journey Rome–London was issued on 29 October to Henry Tilson, just over three weeks after Dahl wrote the letter to his mother. In November the same year two other Swedish painters, Burchardt Precht and Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, came to study in Rome and they do not appear to have been in any contact with Dahl or Tilson, so presumably the two young painters left immediately after the passport had been issued.
caption: Dahl, Portrait of a Lady
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