The aim of this paper is to discuss if, and how, a Nordic Renaissance was preconditioned by the invention of the printing press. The main example will be a stylistic comparison between Flemish prints and a portrait of the Swedish Queen Christina, (probably) painted by the Stockholm painter Jacob Heinrich Elbfas in 1637, when Christina was 11 years old. Of the several surviving versions of this portrait, the one with Stockholm seen through a window in the background in the Nationalmuseum’s Swedish Portrait Collection is the best known today. The linear character of these portraits, as well as their similarity to other portraits of this period in terms of settings and poses, indicate a dependence on prints as models. This demonstrates how imported prints were used as models by painters in the Nordic countries to repeat and imitate Renaissance iconography and aesthetics.

The topic of this paper is approached theoretically through Christopher S. Wood’s conceptual rethinking of the Renaissance north of the Alps, as developed in his Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art (2008). According to Wood, the Gutenberg revolution should be seen as a more important catalyst for artistic and cultural change in Northern Europe than the need to reconnect with antiquity that motivated the Italian Renaissance. Whereas the Italians of the fifteenth century saw their own age as a “new beginning” and a rebirth of classical antiquity after its interruption by the Middle Ages, the Germans saw themselves as the last in a long, unbroken lineage that connected them to their ancient past. According to the same logic, the Renaissance ruler Erik XIV of Sweden considered himself as the last in a long lineage of Swedish kings named Erik, going back to Goths and Wends. Since the Nordic countries were closely connected to German culture and politics, I will discuss how Wood’s theory and the paradigm of print culture can help us to better understand the Renaissance in the Nordic countries.