Roslin was in St Petersburg when he started work on this large portrait of Gustav III in coronation robes. When the courtier Gustaf Adolf Reu terholm saw it in the artist’s studio, only the basic features had been painted, but he still found the image of the king “extremely striking”. Roslin completed the portrait in Paris in 1777. Despite following the visual conventions of the Baroque, the artist has managed to capture the personality of the sitter behind all the pomp.