1564-1566 Parrasio Micheli - Portrait of a Woman

He came from a extremely poor and abusive background but worked his way into fine society, where he fell in love with fellow artist Karin Bergöö, and his works shifted to painting his home life.

Painting titled "My Loved Ones"

I could tell so many stories about this family, but to sum it up they lived the definition of what we would call a cottagecore life where both Carl and Karin worked as artists in their dream house that they designed and built together. It really was an artist’s home built with pure love, and also a big contrast to what a typical Swedish home looked like at the time. The late 1800s trend was to have a dark home with gothic vibes and brown and dark red colours. The Larsson’s home though is bright and colourful with big windows and homemade textiles sewn by Karin.

I also wanted to tell a bit about Brita, the cute little girl on her father’s shoulders in the painting in the original post. She was the fifth child of seven and felt sometimes like she didn’t get enough attention from her dad as a middle child in a big family. To get more time with her dad she would ask him to paint only her as often as possible since then she could talk to him without any of her siblings annoying them. This is how she became the most painted of all the children with hundreds of portraits made with her as the model. She was 89 years old when she died in 1982 and loved to talk about her childhood and those many, many painting sessions with dad.

plenty of people in the past weren't as racist, sexist, classist, etc. as the official party line for their time and culture. hell, they found the diary of a Yorkshire farmer from the early 19th century where he basically says that (male) homosexuality is natural and doesn't deserve the death penalty then imposed by English law- and implies that some other people around him felt the same way. your protagonist doesn't have to hold Macro-Level Views that you or readers would find abhorrent

but. you can sell that much better if the person seems thoroughly grounded in the day-to-day culture of the era. of course there's a king! obviously corsets are basic, ubiquitous support garments! [insert most common local religion here] is objective fact! using slang is rude in many settings! one doesn't talk to men about one's monthlies! etc.

if you’re using real historical suffering and injustice, putting twitter takes into a character’s mouth like they understand global economics or know about the Geneva conventions diminishes the actual real people who lived through those events “slaves should have leveraged their roll in the plantation economy for better working conditions” “if these Chinese peasants just read books more they’d be able to fight the British empire!”