Saga

Dated 1926, this late work in gold belongs to Munthe's decorative phase, when he had moved decisively away from naturalist landscape painting toward stylised, ornamental work influenced by Norse mythology, medieval illumination, and the broader European Art Nouveau movement. Munthe was a central figure in the development of Norwegian applied art and decorative design, creating tapestry cartoons, furniture designs, and book illustrations that drew on Norse legend and medieval imagery. A work described as 'Saga' in gold medium almost certainly belongs to this decorative strand of his practice — the use of gold paint or gold ground connects the work to medieval manuscript illumination and Byzantine icon painting, both of which influenced the Art Nouveau interest in flat, precious, stylised representation. Munthe's late career engagement with saga subjects reflected the wider Norwegian cultural interest in constructing a national identity from the heroic pre-Christian past, and his visual language for this material was genuinely original rather than merely historicist.

A gold medium implies the use of metallic paint or genuine gold leaf applied to a prepared surface. The visual effect — luminous, reflective, flat — differs fundamentally from the naturalist oil painting of Munthe's earlier career. Figural or decorative elements within the gold ground would typically be rendered in flat, simplified forms that reflect the influence of medieval decorative traditions.