To enhance his image in Sweden and abroad, the Swedish king Gustav III (1746-1792) launched a ‘medallic history’ - a history in medals - of his reign. His project was modelled on the ‘histoire métallique’ of the French king Louis XIV, but the relationships between the Swedish and the French project have not been studied earlier. Like that of Louis XIV, the Swedish venture included both actual medals in gold and silver, and a luxurious folio book of engravings of the medals. The typographical layout of the book derived from its French model, and Gustav III, like the ‘Sun King’, aimed at a top quality product using the latest technological innovations. As regards the ideological message of the medals, the Swedish project, like the French one, glorified the ruling dynasty, but it conveyed the image of a modern, enlightened reformer in the spirit of the French ‘Philosophes’ of the 18th century. Whereas Louis XIV’s ‘histoire métallique’, for example, hailed the triumph of Catholicism over Protestant ‘heresy’, Gustav III’s project hailed the introduction of religious toleration, though also stressing that the Swedish king was a faithful Protestant. Gigantic sums were invested into the Swedish medallic history, but financial difficulties proved insuperable: only part of the medals were coined, and the book was not published in Gustav III’s lifetime. Sweden in the late 18th century was no longer a great European power as it had been in the days of Louis XIV.