Insular art (Ireland and Britain)

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c. 600 – 900 · Europe · painting, sculpture, decorative arts · origin: Isle of Iona, Scotland

Celtic knots and interlaced beasts on Gospel pages: ornament as prayer

How to recognise it

• Dense interlace of ribbons and animal bodies
• Spirals and triskeles as on Celtic metalwork
• Carpet pages filled entirely with pattern
• Huge decorated initials filling half a page
• Tall carved stone crosses

Why it emerged

Monasteries in Ireland and Northumbria, far from Rome, fused the Christian book with the ornament of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon metalworkers; copying the Gospels was a devotional feat, and the book was adorned like a relic.

Examples

Book of Kellsc. 800Summit of Insular manuscripts: 340 folios of near-endless interlace and fantastic beastsLindisfarne Gospelsc. 715 · Eadfrith of LindisfarneIts 10th-century gloss is the oldest surviving translation of the Gospels into EnglishBook of Durrowc. 680The earliest fully decorated Insular Gospel book, with carpet pagesRuthwell Crossc. 730Its runes carry lines of 'The Dream of the Rood', among the oldest English poems

Meanwhile elsewhere

• Classic Maya art Americas
• Byzantine art Europe
• Early Islamic art (Umayyad and Abbasid) Middle East
• Moorish style (al-Andalus) Europe
• Khmer art of Angkor Asia
• Yamato-e, Heian Japanese painting Asia

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