Celtic art

Gaelic crosses near Ashford, 6 km/4 mi north of Wicklow, Ireland.

Gold and enamel torque with horse-head decoration from Porogi Jampol Vinnica (or Vinnitsa), Ukraine, 1st century AD (Ethnographic Museum, Vinnica, Ukraine). Metal torques were a characteristic ornament of the Celts, who wore them around their necks and arms. Gold torques reflected the wearer's high status. Torques vary in design – some are completely covered in decoration while others, such as this example, are made of twisted gold wire, ornamented only at the terminals.

The intricate stonework of Celtic masons is frequently seen on wayside crosses such as this one in Ireland.

Art of the Celtic peoples of Western Europe, emerging about 500 BC, probably on the Rhine. It spread to most parts of Europe, but after the 1st century BC flourished only in Britain and Ireland, its influence being felt well into the 10th century AD. Pottery, woodwork, jewellery, and weapons are among its finest products, with manuscript illumination and stone crosses featuring in late Celtic art. Typically, Celtic art is richly decorated with flowing curves which, though based on animal and plant motifs, often form semi-abstract designs.

Early Celtic art, which reached its high point in 1st-century Britain, excelled in metalwork – in particular weapons and jewellery. In Britain and Ireland, Celtic art flourished anew with the coming of Christianity, producing sculpture (stone crosses) and manuscript illumination, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels (British Museum, London), made about AD 690.

An outstanding example of Celtic art found in continental Europe is highly wrought metalwork, inlaid with coloured enamel and coral, found at La Tène, a site at Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

In the British Isles, Celtic art may be divided into two broad periods: the pre-Christian and the Christian.

Pre-Christian This period covers both art that is purely Celtic, extending from 250 BC to AD 400, and that affected by Anglo-Saxon culture, from AD 400. The metal most commonly used was bronze or possibly gold (for example, the Ipswich torques, made about 50 BC), and the chief objects of decoration were shields, scabbards, bracelets, harness mountings, and horse trappings. Repoussé work of low and high relief, done on thin plates which were afterwards riveted into position, has been found throughout the British Isles in river and lake beds, in earth houses, crannogs (houses built over lakes or bogs), and grave mounds. Sometimes the repoussé design is enriched by champlevé (grooves filled with enamel) of yellow, blue, green, and red, or by patches of coloured vitreous pastes. Patterns of millefiori glass occur and the enamelling is often in the characteristic form of attached ‘escutcheons’ or plates of enamel. A unique oval bronze shield, recovered from the River Thames, has 27 settings of red enamel. During these early centuries the Celtic artists depended on divergent spirals of whorls and elliptical curves for their designs, engraved lines or dots filling up the pattern, which thus showed up against the plain groundwork.

Christian This period begins in AD 597. Many fresh elements of ornament, such as fretwork (geometrical carving) with involved patterns, diagonal frets and oblique lines, interlaced work and shaped designs, were added as further embellishments when traditional beliefs gave way to Christianity, which brought with it a host of new artefacts (bells, croziers, shrines, churches, and, above all, the manuscripts of the Gospels and Psalters) to serve the Celtic artist with new opportunities and challenges. Sculpture in the form of large stone crosses is also a distinctive feature of this period. Some Byzantine influence can be seen, but the monastic artists evidently had much recourse to the earlier patterns of Celtic metalwork. The Book of Kells (AD 800; Trinity College, Dublin) and the Lindisfarne Gospels (AD 690; British Museum, London), with their intricately illuminated pages, clearly show the interlaced lines, whorled circles, and dotted grounds previously associated with the applied arts. Enamelled metalwork still flourished, a fine example being the Ardagh Chalice (Dublin Museum). The Tara and Rogart brooches (both Dublin Museum) are fine examples of filigree and chasing work in gold and silver. The main collections of Celtic art are in the British Museum and the Dublin Museum.