| Trumpet pattern. |
Trumpet pattern.One form of ornament, which occurs very frequently in the Irish manuscripts, is what is often called "the trumpet pattern" from its supposed resemblance to a curved metal trumpet. This kind of spiral ornament is used not only in the Celtic manuscripts and goldsmiths' work, but also on bronze shields and other pieces of metal-work on a large scale. This special ornament is not peculiar to the Irish, but was commonly used by the Celtic tribes of Britain from a very early date.
| Arab influence. |
Arab influence.United with these purely native types of ornament, we find in these Celtic manuscripts one curious class of foreign ornament derived from the patterns on imported pieces of textile stuffs woven in Arab looms[[63]]. Among many strange forms of serpents, dragons and other monsters of northern origin, other animals, such as lions, eagles and swans, occur which resemble closely those represented with such perfect conventional skill on the rich silk stuffs and early Oriental carpets woven in Syria, in the Arab towns of Sicily and in other Moslem centres. These beautiful stuffs were imported largely into Northern Europe for ecclesiastical purposes, such as for the vestments of priests or to form wrappings round some sacred reliquary[[64]].
| The human form. |
The human form.Though these Celtic manuscripts show such marvellous dexterity of touch and unerring firmness of line in every minute and complicated pattern, yet the monastic artist appears to have been absolutely incapable of representing the human form.
The figures of Christ and the Saints, which sometimes do occur in these manuscripts, are treated in a purely ornamental and (in its stricter sense) conventional way; the hair and beard, for example, are worked up into scrolls or spiral ornaments, and the draperies are merely masses of varied colour, with little or no resemblance to the folds of a dress.
| Colours without gold. |
Colours without gold.The pigments used by the Celtic monks are very varied and of the most brilliant tints, prepared with such skill that after more than a thousand years they seem as fresh and bright as ever.
Among these pigments is included the fine murex purple which the Irish monks used occasionally to stain sheets of vellum like those in the Golden Gospels of the Byzantines. We are told by the Venerable Bede that the Irish monks had learnt how to extract this beautiful dye from a variety of the murex shell-fish which is not uncommon on both shores of the Irish Channel. Splendid as they are in colour, there is one curious feature in the early Irish manuscripts of the finest class, such as the Book of Kells; that is, that no gold or silver either in the form of leaf or as a fluid pigment is used. This seems specially strange when we remember the close connection there was between the arts of the goldsmith and of the illuminator of manuscripts among the Irish artists.