Gripla - 01.01.1979, Page 86

82
GRIPLA
THE RELATION OF FOREIGN PRINTS TO
SOME ICELANDIC RELIGIOUS IMAGES
I
The National Museum of Iceland possesses a painted altar piece (Inv. No. 4527)
from the last half of the 17th century, with a picture of the sainted Norwegian
king Ólafur (Figure 1). The altar piece, which previously belonged to Berufjörður
church in eastern Iceland, was presented to the church by the sheriff Jón Þorláks-
son, son of bishop Þorlákur Skúlason, and his wife Sesselja Hallgrímsdóttir. The
altar piece is remarkable among other because the rendering of St. Ólafur is ob-
viously closely related to a woodcut representing the same saint in Breviarium
Nidrosiense, printed in Paris 1519. There the picture is printed twice; once as the
frontispiece (Figure 2).1 This relationship was first noticed by the Rev. Dr. Jakob
Jónsson, who wrote about it in a Norwegian periodical some twenty years ago.2
In 1968 the artist Aage Nielsen-Edwin made a copy of the altar piece to be pre-
sented to Berufjörður church. The task was performed at the National Museum,
and at that time the relationship between the altar piece and the woodcut was first
brought to my attention.
II
In connection with an investigation of Icelandic laid and couched embroideries
(mainly altar frontals), I had noticed a few details in two illuminations in an Ice-
landic law manuscript, AM 160 4to, dated to the second half of the 15th century,3
details which, it seemed to me, could hardly date prior to the 16th century. I
mentioned the dating to Stefán Karlsson, manuscript specialist at the Arnamagnæ-
an Institute of Iceland, and he informed me that he considered the manuscript one
of a group from northwestern Iceland dating from the middle of the 16th century,
as he had pointed out in an article 1970.4
With this interesting information in mind, I re-examined the two aforemen-
tioned illuminations in AM 160 4to, and suddenly I realized that the St. Ólafur
picture in one of them closely resembled the one painted on the altar piece from
Berufjörður church (Figure 3). Comparing the illumination with the painting this
was found to be so, although the illumination, i.e. the rendering of St. Ólafur him-
self, disregarding the decorative framework surrounding the figure, proved in fact
to be much more closely related to the woodcut in Breviarium Nidrosiense than to
the painting. There can be no doubt that the manuscript illumination is copied
from the Breviarium or a picture like the one printed there. In other words, a
clear, dated example has been found showing that, at the close of the Middle Ages
in Iceland, a printed illustration served as a model for a manuscript illumination.