It was in December last year that a man attached a sticker to a brass sign on the frame of the painting.
On the sticker there was a skull and the text "it's ok to kill nazis" and "antifa".
In interrogation with the police, the man has told that he put the sticker there after a spontaneous whim when he and a friend were at the museum after being in town and drinking alcohol.
- It's Karl XII on the board and he's quite big in Nazism, so I thought it would be fun to stick the sticker there and send it to the person who had made it.
I like art myself so I did not paste on the painting itself but on the sign on the frame, he says in interrogation.
"Important for the myth-making around Charles XII"
In the lawsuit, the prosecutor writes that Gustaf Cederström's painting has a great cultural and historical value, something that Kulturnyheter's art critic Dennis Dahlqvist agrees with.
- But the painting is really something of a fake, because Charles XII's equality did not happen that way.
But it has been important in the myth-making surrounding Charles XII as the brave warrior king who died for the Swedish people.
In that way, it has played a central role in Swedish history, says Dennis Dahlqvist.
Dennis Dahlqvist says that it is not entirely uncommon for art museums to be sabotaged.
- Sometimes you have even cut into cloths.
This time, fortunately, it was a rather prudent marauder who just put a sticker, and not even on the board, but on the sign on the frame.
And I think we should be grateful for that, says Dennis Dahlqvist.