ICO Iconographisk Post. Nordisk tidskrift för bildtolkning – Nordic Review of Iconography
ICO – Iconographisk Post. Nordisk tidskrift för bildtolkning – Nordic Review of Iconography is a Nordic review for iconographic research that aims to generate, discuss and disseminate new knowledge primarily regarding the visual cultural heritage of the Nordic region. Iconographical research is conducted by all disciplines concerned with interpretation and analysis of visual material, i.e. mainly in the humanities, theology, and some of the social sciences. It is ICO’s ambition to function as an interdisciplinary and inter Nordic forum for iconographical research in a broad sense. Besides scholarly articles and reviews, it contains short presentations of new literature and a forum for discussion of iconographical questions. Iconography is primarily the study of the content and meaning of images and is used by different disciplines such as art history, semiotics, history, church history, archaeology, visual culture and media studies. Iconography is of central importance for the understanding and interpretation of visual images of all ages, as well as for how symbols, personifications and attributes change over time. As an analytical instrument, it is applicable to images of all cultures, from Sumerian cylinder seals to modern ads.
Ikonografiska Sällskapet & Konsthistoria och visuella studier, Lunds universitet.
Bildkunnighet och beredskap. Vilken kunskap behövs för att möta desinformation genom bild? Karlstad 2026
Copyright (c) 2026 ICO Iconographisk Post. Nordisk tidskrift för bildtolkning – Nordic Review of Iconography
Anders Lundt Hansen: Vilhelm Erobreren. Da Norden mistede England, København 2025
Eva Johansson: Marmor från Finland. Svensk maktsymbol under flera sekler, Helsingfors & Stockholm 2026
Fromme ønsker. Brugen af emblemer som personligt erindringsmedium i dansk kirkekunst
Pious wishes. The Use of Emblems as Personal Media of Memory in Danish Church Art In Scandinavia, many church venues are decorated with emblems, sometimes in extensive emblematic programs. These decorations address the congregation, expressing a specific type of Christian devotion. The individual emblems often display a human heart and its condition when chastened or enlightened by the word of God. These emblems are in most cases based on the Bible, the content of which is thus mediated to the viewer. To fulfil the intended use and effect, the messages must be fairly consistent. However, emblems are also encountered in other ecclesiastical and spatial contexts than in large instructive programs, i.e. on objects that refer to death and the afterlife. The awareness of the fragility and brevity of the human condition is communicated in messages that may articulate individual sentiments and create hope or motivate a stoic firmness in the belief in an existence beyond the hardships on earth. Emblems chosen for this purpose will therefore often have a personal or spiritual character. Dealing with messages of this kind, the article focuses on other emblematic sources than those most frequently used in 17th and 18th century churches and their decorations.
The Royal Palace in Stockholm as a National Symbol The article argues that both the old medieval palace and the new palace, constructed after the fire in 1697, came to be perceived as symbols of the Swedish Empire. Although no written program is known, in the new palace, designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (1654–1728), each facade was assigned a “story”, which taken together represented Sweden. The main facade (in this case the northern) represents, as in the Roman tradition, the residence of the lord, i.e. the king. The theme of the western facade was the national government during Sweden’s emergence as a great power, the theme of the southern one the country’s people and church, and of the eastern one its prosperity in science and art. The messages of the facades corresponded to the functions of the rooms behind them. The program was probably established by King Charles XI (1655–1697) no later than 1695, and the regency government that took office in April 1697 found no reason to change the general plan. During the reign of Charles XII (1682–1718), Tessin drew up a city plan that was intended to strengthen the role of the palace as a national symbol. Given that the actual construction work took place during a long period of major political and economic changes, it is natural to assume that its role as a national symbol contributed to the fact that the building plans never changed. When completed externally in the 1760s, the building appeared according to the plans of Charles XI and Tessin. In other words, the building represents the country, not an absolute king of the Great Power era.
Face of a Bird, Legs of an Eagle: The Hybrid Venus in Medieval Texts of Image Magic and the So-Called Talisman of Catherine de’ Medici
This article examines the imagery of the goddess Venus in medieval sources of astrological magic, focusing on a zoomorphic hybrid Venus characterized by avian features. Furthermore, the article examines the transmission of this motif into early modern printed sources and talismans. The most renowned among surviving items related to the hybrid Venus is the 18th-century medallion known as Catherine de Medici’s talisman, depicting on one side a classical Venus figure, and on the other, a seated Jupiter alongside a hybrid with the head and feet of a bird. In previous scholarship it has been argued that the hybrid figure, interpreted as Venus, derives from Cornelius Agrippa and the medieval magical compendium Picatrix. The study demonstrates that the same hybrid Venus appears in several other medieval sources predating Agrippa and independent of the Picatrix. These sources, explored in this article in detail, offer a new insight into the evolution of the zoomorphic Venus, providing a deeper understanding of the ways in which non-Christian and non-classical astrological iconography was transformed and found pathways within medieval literature. Based on the findings of this research, De sigillis attributed to Arnoldus Saxo, seems to provide the most direct model for depicting two distinct Venus figures within the same talisman. The article further argues that the avian hybrid Venus was a dynamic figure among non-classical hybrids, appearing in a relatively wide range of sources, including contexts where astrological hybrids were a rarity.
Om löss och människor. Robert Campin, Adam van Düren och kampen mot ondskan
Of Lice and Man. Robert Campin, Adam van Düren and the Battle against Evil This article deals with two questions relating to the visualization of psychomachia, the battle between good and evil, in Early Modern Europe. One concerning Adam van Düren’s (1450–1532) relief on the well curb in the crypt of Lund Cathedral (signed 1514), where a gigantic, chained louse is sucking the blood of a helpless sheep. Several different suggestions about what the image means have been presented over the years, but no final solution has so far been reached. The other question deals with the depiction of Joseph working in his carpenter’s workshop on the right hand panel of the Mérode Altarpiece – attributed to Robert Campin’s (c. 1375–1444) workshop and executed c. 1427–1432. Several researchers have – especially after the painting was smuggled out of Europe in 1956 and sold in the USA – carefully examined all of Joseph’s tools and what he has made with them (two mousetraps). Everything has been provided with iconographic descriptions and exegetic interpretations, i.e. everything except the item Joseph is in the process of making. This conspicuously placed object is often passed over in silence or considered meaningless in the context. Based on entomological comparisons, modes of trapping bugs, contemporary images, the Bible and the Church Fathers, the author concludes that in the first case the overlarge louse, personifying evil, probably represents the chained devil in hell, and in the second, that the special object Joseph is making is intended to trap the evil bugs of devilish nature (corresponding to the mousetraps he has already made): a bedbug board.
Kristina Ekero Eriksson & Bo Eriksson: Nordsjöimperiet. Vikingarnas välde, Stockholm 2025
Copyright (c) 2025 ICO Iconographisk Post. Nordisk tidskrift för bildtolkning – Nordic Review of Iconography
Addressing the Unknown: the Funeral Bier as a Medium
The funeral bier was a common object in Christian funerals in Finland from the Middle Ages up to the Second World War. The bier was used throughout Europe for carrying the deceased into the church or to the gravesite, in the funerals of both the nobility and commoners. The biers were simple wooden stretchers, but some of them also carried death-related imagery and texts. They also served as stands under the coffins, and images of such arrangements also appeared alongside texts in printed funeral works. The funeral bier has been a largely overlooked object in scholarly studies in art, cultural, and literary history. This article focuses on the funeral bier and its use as a medium of communication in Early Modern Finland. The aim is to show how messages between the living and the dead, and the transcendental and the mundane in a broader sense could have been conveyed during and after the Lutheran funeral through the funeral bier. As an object, the bier was combined with text in two different ways: adding image compositions featuring biers to printed texts and adding texts to actual biers. This is illustrated with selected cases of Finnish funeral biers depicted in 17th-century funeral works, and extant biers from the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on how the funeral bier could have served as a medium for addressing the unknown, that is, for communicating with the transcendental realm.
Talkative Head Reliquaries in the Nordic and Livonian Middle Ages
Reliquaries shaped as heads or hands were called “speaking reliquaries” for several decades since the term – in German, redende Reliquiare – was coined by Joseph Braun in his book Die Reliquiare des Christlichen Kultes und ihre Entwicklung (1940). Their shape was assumed to have an explicitly informative function: to reflect the relics they contained. This was challenged by Cynthia Hahn in her article The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries (1997. Hahn has since shown in her many articles and books that the relation between the shapes and contents of reliquaries is not straightforward, and that reliquaries of various shapes can indeed “speak”. This article examines the “talkativity” of head reliquaries with examples from the Baltic and Nordic countries. It discusses their different forms of expression and their thematics, ranging from concrete aspects such as the saints represented by the reliquary and the relics within to the identity of their commissioners, and more abstract themes like sainthood, seeing, belief, and blessing.
Eufori och melankoli – Om kroppsspråket och den ikonografiska traditionen
Euphoria and Melancholy – Body Language and the Iconographic Tradition This article addresses gestures and body language associated with joy and sadness. The examples presented are drawn from different periods, but the main interest revolves around a couple of carved reliefs on the medieval choir stalls in Lund Cathedral in present day Sweden. With reference to dendrochronological samples, these images may be dated to the 1350s or 1360s. The choir stalls are made of oak and decorated in high-gothic fashion with elegantly crafted scenes taken from the Bible and the Legenda aurea. In addition, there are also symbolic representations of the twelve months, as well as prophets and a vast number of animals. Some of the Biblical motifs are arranged in a typological fashion, which means that the images from the Old and the New Testament correspond with each other. Most of the scenes depicted on the choir stalls are rather easy to identify. In the present article, however, two of the more obscure images will be examined. With the support of iconographic parallels and written sources from different periods, these scenes may be identified as Adam and Eve lamenting the death of their son Abel, and Bathsheba at the court of King Solomon or Esther and Ahasuerus.
Talende billeder og objekter – et sammendrag
Talking Images and Artefacts – a Summary This article is an extensive, illustrated summary of the papers presented at the 28. Nordic Iconographic Symposium, August 25–28, 2025, in Laulasmaa, Estonia. The languages mainly spoken at the Nordic Iconographic Symposia are Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, but presentations and discussions in English are also welcome. This summary is written in Danish. The theme of the symposium was “Talking images and artefacts” (Talande bilder och föremål). The organizers’ main idea behind this theme was “to explore the potential for action in images by focusing on their ability to communicate with the viewer”. How do images achieve this, how do they “speak”? The participants were invited to explore the topic by for instance studying a specific group of images/artefacts, or presenting a theoretical discussion. Images can communicate in many ways, together with written words or texts, through gestures and body language etc. But is it at all possible to understand messages from the past, and what do they “tell” the present day viewer? Three of the 24 papers are published in this issue of ICO, one in Swedish and two in English: Herman Bengtsson’s “Eufori och melankoli – Om kroppsspråket och den ikonografiska traditionen” (Euphoria and Melancholy: Body Language and the Iconographic Tradition); “Talkative Head Reliquaries in the Nordic and Livonian Middle Ages” by Sofia Lahti and “Addressing the Unknown: the Funeral Bier as a Medium” by Saila Leskinen.
Det 28. Nordiska Ikonografiska Symposiet
Report from the 28. Nordic Iconographic Symposium in Laulasmaa, Estonia, August 25–28, 2025. The theme of the symposium was Talking images and artefacts (Talande bilder och föremål).
Karin Gustavsson & Solfrid Söderlind, red.: Nils Månsson Mandelgren och kampen för kulturens framtid, Lund 2025
Karl XI:s och Nicodemus Tessin d.y:s projekt till Stockholms slottskyrka – sedda genom några predikotexter och böndagsplakat
The Projects of King Carl XI and Nicodemus Tessin the Younger for the Royal Chapel in Stockholm – viewed through some sermons and prayer day proclamation King Carl XI (1655–1697) implemented autocracy in Sweden and, as a deeply religious person, took control over both the kingdom and the church. During the 1690s the palace architect, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (1654–1728), drew up three proposals for a chapel within the Royal Palace in Stockholm, one of which stayed on the drawing board. The initial designs for the altar of the first project were probably all made by the sculptor Burchardt Precht (1651–1738) in cooperation with Tessin. Precht was also entrusted with the execution of the figurative parts. Both Carl XI and Tessin had most probably been influenced by Bishop Haquin Spegel’s (1645–1714) sermons when it came to the planned chapel interior at the Palace. Three iconographic motifs took centre stage: the divine light, the sacrificial death of Jesus and the guiding presence of the Christian virtues. Tessin gave the divine light a central place by having the name of God engraved in a circular window above the altarpiece. The wrath of the Lord over the sinful lives of the people was made visible through the sacrificial lamb or through the chalice in the Garden of Gethsemane in the altarpieces, while the virtues appeared between columns around the naves as instructions on the route that members of the court congregation with the Royal couple at the head had to take. The church interior, richly adorned with columns, would support the proclamation of a strengthened joint responsibility for the prosperity of both the country and its inhabitants.
The Late Gothic Altarpiece in the Cathedral of Oviedo – A Spanish Retablo and its Atlantic Context
The altarpiece on the main altar of Oviedo Cathedral is one of the largest and best preserved of Spain’s giant late Gothic retablos. It was erected between 1511 and 1531 by several carpenters and woodcarvers from Spain, the Low Countries and perhaps northern France. Whereas the style of the carved scenes, figures and baldachins is clearly rooted in the Netherlandish tradition, retables of such a vast size and with such an architecturally-designed structure remained exclusive to the Iberian Peninsula. The traditional term hispanoflamenco (Spanish-Flemish) fails to do justice to the altarpiece’s hybrid character, as it is more complex than just a Flemish import. Its appearance and message must be understood in the light of late medieval Oviedo’s cultural and economic networks that extended from the Peninsula along Europe’s Atlantic rim. Additional circumstances of a distinctly local character also influenced the design and iconography of the altarpiece. These include its location in a short chancel behind a transparent trellis screen which made it clearly visible to all those present, and an intriguing local tradition surrounding a late Antique marble jar that was venerated as one of the vessels said to have been present at the Wedding at Cana.
Triumphkreuze in mittelalterlichen Landkirchen und ihre Verbindung zur Altardekoration
Triumphal Crosses in Medieval Rural Churches and their Connection to Altar Decoration Medieval rural churches were decorated with various images. They were mainly found in connection with the altar – at the main altar in the chancel and the side altars in the nave of the church. The triumphal cross was located in the transitional zone between chancel and nave and was directly visible on entering a country church. Not a single medieval church interior has been preserved in its entirety. However, it is possible to explore the interplay of various elements in the church interior by using the surviving objects. This article explores the interrelationship between the triumphal cross and altar decoration in general on the basis of specific examples from the Nordic countries. It becomes clear that the aspect of visual layering of images, the partial withdrawal of the view and the resulting concentration on the visible image must be recognized as essential strategies of the triumphal cross in a spatial context. Unlike other decorative elements in the church interior, the triumphal cross is decidedly orientated towards the congregation gathered in the nave during mass. Thus, it becomes an element that both connects and divides the church interior. Like a membrane, it separates the liturgical ritual at the main altar from the congregation in the nave. When mass is not being celebrated, it becomes a visual reminder of Christ’s sacrificial death as an act of redemption of humankind.
Editorial with short presentations of the articles and information about the in August 2024 formally established association The Nordic Iconographic Society.
Simon McKeown: Emblems at Läckö. An Insight into the Visual World of Magnus Gabriel and Maria Euphrosyne De la Gardie, 2024.
Review in Swedish of Emblems at Läckö. An Insight into the Visual World of Magnus Gabriel and Maria Euphrosyne De la Gardie, by Simon McKeown, published by Skara Stiftshistoriska Sällskap, Skara (Sweden) 2024.
Ingalill Pegelow 1931–2023 – in memoriam
Obituary: Ingalill Pegelow, 23 April 1931–31 May 2023 – PhD in Art History, active at the Iconographical Register at the National Antiquity Board, Stockholm, and ICO's editor 1979–1996.
Obituary: Jan Svanberg, 18 June 1935–21 April 2024 – professor emeritus in Art History at the University of Oslo. He was also lecturer and acting professor in Art History at Stockholm University (1973–1993).
”När detta Lijf förgår / Ett Nytt jag igän får”. Daniel Hjulströms målningar i det Grotenfeltska gravkapellet i Jorois, Savolax, Finland
“When this Life ends / A new one I will gain”. Daniel Hjulström’s paintings in the Grotenfelt family’s burial chapel in Jorois, Savonia, Finland Abstract: The article focuses on the Swedish artisan painter Daniel Hjulström (1703–1787) and his decorations in the Grotenfelt family’s burial chapel in Jorois, Northern Savonia (Finland). It was built in the 1770s (possibly in 1776) and its walls and ceiling were painted by Hjulström with a variety of plant motifs combined with quotations from the Bible. Five walls have representations of the four seasons – spring, summer, fall and two winter scenes. The visualisation of the shifts in nature parallels the phases of human life, from birth to adulthood and finally death, all underlined by appropriate Bible quotations. Hjulström also painted the inside of the coffin lid for Georg Johan Grotenfelt (1712–1764) with floral motifs and texts alluding to resurrection and eternal life. The author further explores the painter’s use of illustrations in pietistic, devotional books and their emblematic imagery in other of his works. The article also discusses the prerequisites and working conditions for artisan painters in Sweden-Finland during the latter part of the 18th century (until 1809 the same country). They were educated within a guild and assigned a variety of works, from the decoration of cupboards and chests for private homes to full-scale church interiors. Hjulström is a case in point. Born and educated in Sweden, he worked there in various churches, for instance the one in Dalby, Värmland, where he painted the gallery balustrade in 1737–1740. In 1747 he moved to Finland and painted altarpieces, ceilings, pulpits and gallery balustrades in various churches, as well as profane objects. From 1762 until 1786 he lived in Jorois, on an estate (Paajala/Örnevik) belonging to his patrons, the family Grotenfelt; the last year of his life he lived in Häyrilä, a nearby village.
En målning av Marie bebådelse av Herman Han i Kläckeberga kyrka i Småland
A painting of the Annunciation by Herman Han in the Church of Kläckeberga in Småland Abstract: A painting of the Annunciation by Herman Han (Gdansk 1580–Koznitz 1627/1628) dated 1616, in Kläckeberga Church, Småland (Sweden), is all that remains of an altarpiece that was taken as war booty in 1626 during Gustav II Adolf’s conquest of Braunsberg (Braniewo) in Prussia and was installed in 1633 on the high altar in Storkyrkan in Stockholm. After being replaced by another altarpiece, from 1702 to c. 1820, it adorned the altar in Kungsholm Church, Stockholm. In 1839, it was put up for sale and later donated to Kläckeberga, where it was rediscovered in 1915. Ever since, it has attracted the attention of Polish and Swedish art historians alike, not only for the painting itself but also for its inscriptions: ANNO 1616. INVENIT & PINXIT HERMAN HAN, ORATE PRO ILLO and D. O. M. BARBARA KNUTOWNA SUPERIORISSA PRO TUNC FIERI CURAVIT (The Mother Superior Barbara Knutowna has had [the altarpiece] created here). In the article, special attention is paid to the orchestra of angels in the celestial part of the painting. Two other such orchestras by Herman Han are also discussed, both in the predella to an altarpiece from 1619 in the cathedral in Pelplin. The detailed rendering of the orchestras shows that the artist had an intimate understanding of contemporary music and the instruments in use. By adding “sound” to the standardised formula for the Annunciation since the early 17th century, he has thus created his own individual version of the event.
Förlorat guld. Absidmålningarna i Löderups kyrka, Skåne
Lost Gold. The Apse Paintings in Löderup Church, Scania, Sweden This article is an excerpt from Inger Ahlstedt Yrlid’s doctoral thesis Och i hopp om det eviga livet. Studier i Skånes romanska muralmåleri (And in Hope of Life Eternal. Studies in Scanian Romanesque Murals) published in 1976, in which the author summarizes what is known about the vanished Romanesque murals in Löderup Church in southeastern Scania (i.e. Medieval Denmark, now Sweden) before their destruction in the 1860s. It is part of the introduction to the thesis, where the Romanesque frescoes in Scania and their state of preservation (if any) is described. “The Löderup example” is a case study illustrating the fate of many other Scanian church paintings during the 19th century. The posthumously published study on the Danish Romanesque murals by Ulla Haastrup (Danske romanske kalkmalerier, 2024; reviewed in ICO, nr 1–2, 2024) discusses the wall paintings in 99 churches of which 14 are located in Scania. Several significant Scanian cases are, however, missing and Löderup Church is one of them. Its apse was probably one of the period’s most lavishly decorated and exemplifies the strong Byzantine influence that Haastrup highlights in her study.
Ulla Haastrup: Danske romanske kalkmalerier. Fra 1000-tallet til o. 1200. Aarhus Universitetsforlag 2024
Copyright (c) 2024 ICO Iconographisk Post. Nordisk tidskrift för bildtolkning – Nordic Review of Iconography
Lotta Nylund: Alexander Lauréus genremålningar och den tidiga romantikens visuella kultur, diss., Helsingfors 2023