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!
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Lidwinas_fall.png)
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!
![](https://pagophilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/douce-5.png)
[…] 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. […]