The dates of the Hieronymus Bosch paintings in my previous post aren’t quite clear—there’s a range of 10–20 years for each. I found it interesting that the early ends of these ranges are actually earlier than the woodcut of St. Lydwina’s accident, which often gets the credit for being “[t]he first depiction of ice skating in a work of art.” That woodcut was published in Johannes Brugman’s Vita alme virginis liidwine in 1498. Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings could have been slightly earlier!
But it doesn’t matter which of these images is the oldest by a year or two, because there’s another image that beats them all. The drawing below is part of a manuscript produced in Ghent about 1320. And now the license has changed so I can reproduce it here!
[…] Like virtually all skating books, it starts out with a little on bone skates. It moves pretty quickly through those and early metal-bladed skates, including the picture of St. Lydwina’s accident and the one from Bodleian MS Douce 5. […]