The Celtic, Pictish, Anglo-Saxon and Viking peoples who inhabited the British Isles and Ireland from late prehistory to the Norman Conquest left a rich visual heritage, the influence of which continues to be felt. This two-part course presents an illustrated overview of the early art of the British and Irish archipelago during one of the most formative periods in its history. It explores the interaction between its inhabitants, along with the formation of national and regional identities, through the lens of visual culture.
World-class specialist Michelle P. Brown explains the historical context within which key artworks of the period were made and used, ranging across works as diverse as the Book of Kells, the Tara Brooch, the Aberlemno Stones, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Alfred Jewel and the Benedictional of St Ethelwold, and examines the ways in which their complex imagery can be interpreted. She also considers the impact of the art of this period upon the history of art in general, helping to inform both the Carolingian renaissance, the Romanesque and, from the late nineteenth century, the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements.
Part 1 - Formation and Fruition of Insular Art, c.450-900
The term Insular denotes 'of the islands', in this case Britain and Ireland, in the period between to end of the Roman Empire in the West and the coming of the Vikings. It witnessed a rich fusion of prehistoric influences from the Celtic and Germanic with the arts of the Mediterranean and the Near East. Each of the ancient kingdoms of the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons and the British had its own traditions and used them to denote difference, and yet the unifying and often supra-territorial influence of Christianity and the impetus of trade engendered also gave rise to a distinctive esperanto of art in which all were represented and as intertwined as the interlace and spiral-work patterns that characterised it.
The burial mounds of princes and the shrines of saints contained treasures from across the known world in metal, glass, bone, wood and textile. The new arts of the book flourished, giving rise to epic works of literature, such as the prototype poem The Dream of the Rood carved upon the stone Ruthwell Cross, and scribal heroics in the 'desert of the book' to produce masterpieces such as the Books of Durrow and Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels. The altars of churches of timber, drystone corbelling, and dressed stone bore plate of the beauty of the Ardagh Chalice and the Derrynaflan Hoard and the landscape was punctuated with monuments and crosses of stone, from Pictish Scotland to Cornwall. With glittering gold, silver, bronze and jewel colours and carefully crafted words and images which explored subtle meanings and conveyed visions of human and divine power, the 'dark ages' were anything but!
This study-day will be structured in three, one-hour lectures (10.15–11.15, 11-45-12.45, and 13.45-14.45), with time for questions at the end of each.
